My Boy Builds Coffins
by kashicanhaz
Summary: On the eve of Sansa Stark's sixteenth nameday, Alayne Stone hears word that Tyrion Lannister has died by dragonfire in Meereen. Everything seems to be going according to plan. When word of Sansa Stark's re-emergence reaches the Quiet Isle outside of Saltpans, a novice carpenter (until recently a gravedigger) steals off North, hoping to offer his services to the new Queen.
1. Prologue

PROLOGUE

**SANDOR**

The days that he blamed himself were easiest. The days he got drunk on naught but his own guilt and misery, the days he choked on sobs for hours, inconsolable, all steeped in self-loathing, they passed in a sweet blur. _I should have stayed,_ he would think, _I could have kept her from that…that_ imp's_ twisted pleasure, I could have kept her safe, I could have, I should have…selfish dog._

Then there were days he blamed her for not coming with him. The days he mocked her memory, all filled back up with his once-customary anger and spite, and convinced himself that she was the mistress of her own damnation. _Stupid Little Bird…_ he would think again, _thinking you could be safe with them. You were never safe with them. You didn't know what you were losing, when you lost me. Piss on your courtesy, your ladies' armor…I was the only armor you ever had... You should have come…You should have come… _And while those days stretched longer, his anger was heady enough to float them past.

It was the days that Reality set in on him that were the worst. He couldn't have stayed to protect her-his desertion from the Blackwater would have cost him his life. She wouldn't have gone with him to any sort of safety-the Little Bird was demure and dutiful, and would have kept on her perch even if the rest of her pretty little cage had fallen away into rubble. The gods had in their plan a cruel destiny set for her and there was nothing the Hound, or even Sandor, could have done to stop it. The Elder Brother tried to convince him to feel some sort of relief in the acceptance of what had happened, but in Sandor's experience, looking Reality in the face was sobering in the worst way possible.

On those days he wanted to be the Hound again, driven on by bitterness and hatred and self-preservation, all wrapped up in his armor, safe and heavy on his arms. It was better than wallowing in his regret (or worse, acceptance); he'd had more control when he used to be the Hound-he had been a fearsome, fearless warrior, and a great one too-but now that he was Sandor, he was a scared, scarred little boy again. He had _burned_…

But he was Sandor, now; he had to remember his _name_.


	2. Alayne I

**ALAYNE**

Alayne watched the sun set behind the mountains of the Vale of Arryn, the taste of lemon cakes still lingering in her mouth. It was Sansa Stark's sixteenth nameday, she remembered (more fiercely than was safe, she thought) and Father had presented her with a plate of lemon cakes for her birthday lunch. Winter had come to the Vale—the sun rose and set in six hours time, and when the wind picked up and blew through the Eyrie there seemed no place in the castle where Alayne could get warm. _I must be grateful, though,_ she would think to herself when her thoughts turned black, _I could have it so much worse. I already have done._

She shivered. Those were Sansa's thoughts, not her own. Though her old life in the sept had not been lavish, the septas who had brought her up had not been unkind, ungentle. _My name is Alayne Stone_, the reminder sounded like a prayer now,_ the natural-born daughter of Lord Petyr Baelish. I have seen seventeen namedays, and am engaged to Harrold Hardyng..._but the last part of her prayer always threatened to open that door, with hinges that squeaked and made her flush crimson, when she remembered _why_.

_They're all liars here,_ S..._some_one had told Sansa, in another lifetime he had, _and every one better than you._ Those words had haunted her, even a long time after she'd wrung the auburn from her hair and taken a bastard's name as her own. But years had passed since she'd been afraid of discovery, and, most days, the highborn girl she used to be sat quietly behind her new name, dutifully quiet.

But today that highborn girl she used to be was sixteen, and a sort of longing filled her that she _knew_, oh she knew was a dangerous feeling, one that took her back to her girlhood, her _real_ girlhood a Winterfell, when her _real_ father would stroke her hair and hand her a little parcel bound with a silk ribbon, tied prettily with a bow... What if she hadn't been so selfish, so naive, so...so...

She _couldn't_. Thoughts like these would break her composure, and she had worked so hard to build it up. It would not be broken now.

A knock came from the door and Alayne spun around, still cloaked in Sansa's daze.

Her father beckoned her to his solar. But it was not the father with the winter-grey eyes and the long face so reflected in her half-brother's and sister's, no...but the man with the sharp little goatee and perpetual smirk. _Father_, she thought, correcting herself, _my father._ She followed the maidservant out and shuffled off towards the interior of the Eyrie.

_I haven't been this bad for ages,_ she thought indulgently, feeling a warmth come to her cheeks. She took a shaky breath and righted herself, _but it's my _nameday... someone insisted quietly, from behind a heavy door.

"Alayne," her father said with a broad grin, sweeping into a chair "my darling. Come sit," and patted his lap.

Alayne did as she was bid.

"Leave us," he hissed happily at the maidservant. The door shut and his hand snaked around her waist. "I have a present for you, my dear..." and he nodded at a parcel, wrapped up with a blue silk bow, his crooked smirk re-appearing. "You've been waiting for this one."

Her pulse quickened as she sprung up out of his lap and crossed to the parcel as fast as her feet would carry her. The ribbon was slick and slipped open with her smallest suggestion of a tug, paper falling open to reveal plush, snowy white.

Snowy white and grey.

He mentioned names and places that meant nothing to Alayne, but somewhere behind her door, Sansa was stirring. Meereen, he said. Dragonfire, he said. A fortnight, he said. But all she could think of was hearing her name again, and seeing her red hair in her looking-glass, and the red-sap features of the heart tree at Winterfell...

_Winterfell_...

For the first time in a long time, it seemed like things were going according to plan.


	3. Sandor I

A/N—The action in this chapter occurs no later than 1 year and 7 months prior to the action in the preceding chapter.

*Paraphrased from/inspired by 'The Second Coming' by W.B. Yeats

**SANDOR**

It was clumsy work, at best.

Sandor cocked his head to the side, regarding the thing, his long hair falling in his eyes. Patiently, he swept it away and ran his fingertips along the sharp edge of the box, the pine wood soft and smooth under his touch (_finally_, he thought with irritation, _took long enough to sand the thrice-damned thing_). At least he'd managed to do that bit right.

But one half of one side lengthwise bowed out and left a gap large enough for the eye to find standing across the room from it; none of the corners were square, he knew, and there was a large, black knot leaking sap all down the bottom-inside; because of the corners, the lid looked mismatched and refused to lay flat, curling skyward like a piece of wet paper.

Gods be damned, though, if he hadn't built them a fucking coffin.

Sandor straightened up and sighed—he felt an absurd sort of pride in the thing, ugly as it was (uglier than him?...not quite, he decided) and stepped around to the sappy corner to scrape the latest from the weeping knot.

"Fine work for an amateur," the Elder Brother said from behind him, giving Sandor a start that spurred him about a foot in the air. _The man's as quiet as the Stranger_, he thought darkly, trying to conceal his embarrassment. "Did I startle you, Brother? My apologies," he said, stepping up next to the bigger man to admire the coffin, his hands unfolding to stroke the wood. "Nice job with the sanding," he said, looking up to meet Sandor's eyes. Suddenly sheepish, Sandor could only nod in thanks and direct his eyes at the Elder Brother's feet.

A silence hung between them for a moment.

"How do you find the feeling of construction as opposed to destruction, Sandor?" the Elder Brother asked quietly. "I give you leave to speak."

Sandor took a heavy breath, measuring his words. "It feels...well, I don't really know, Brother..." he glanced up at his weathered, honest face, and then at his attempt at a pine-box coffin.

"How do you feel having built it, looking at it now?"

"Bloody good..." The Elder Brother shot him a look. "...Accomplished."

"And how were you feeling while you were building it?"

"Peaceful," Sandor answered in a sigh, before he was even conscious he had an answer to give.

The Elder Brother chuckled. "Seems a recurring theme, doesn't it, Sandor?"

Sandor snorted. _As if a dog like me could ever know peace..._ he thought bitterly. _No,_ something inside of him interjected, _the Hound is dead. Your name is Sandor, and you are a man._

The Elder Brother appeared by his side and reached to put a hand on his shoulder. "Is it not a sweet thing, to have something to show for your efforts, Brother?"

A lump threatened to rise in his throat. "A sweet thing." He said quickly, before he could choke on it.

_Killing is the sweetest thing there is_, he had said, somewhere in another life, another soul, and a look of shock and fear had spread across the Little Bird's face as she retreated from him, tears beginning to gloss her eyes and a crease appearing in her brow. "_Why are you always so hateful?"_ she had thrown back, still retreating, still afraid. He had been laughing at her, if he recalled correctly, mocking her naivety—he was not conscious of why, though, why he had to mock the one perfect thing in the whole buggering city, why he had to make her so afraid of him, why he was, as she had asked, so hateful...

He knew now, though; having spent nine moons' turns in the mouth of a seaside cave, isolated from all but himself, he came away from his "meditation" (as the Elder Brother called it) with more than four hundred scrolls' worth of his thoughts in writing, and something like an understanding of himself.

"And _what_ am I to look for on that bloody scrap of coast in the height of autumn storm season? _Peace?_" and the ghost of the Hound had laughed at the Elder Brother, laughed hysterically, laughed bitterly, until the prospect lost its humour. And the Elder Brother had waited.

"You're looking for whatever you find there, Sandor," he had said then, holding out a bag of scrolls, ink, and water to the shell of a man. The ghost of the Hound took it, more gently than he'd intended, and limped off, muttering curses to himself.

_I'll camp out a week, maybe two, _he thought, fighting against the rocky coastline to keep his footing, favouring his bad leg and cursing right and left, _lay low until he's convinced I've found my...my...buggering hells, he never even told me what I was supposed to _find_..._

The first night he spent by the sea, he thought it all very _quaint_. There was something soothing about the sound of the waves, he had to admit, and the sea breeze on his face, stirring his hair, and the sky so thickly sprent with stars that several clusters threatened to outshine the moon that night. He'd woken, though, to the waves coming in at high tide splashing against his face, and that had been the end of any illusions of pleasantness that the "meditation" had offered.

Three days he sat there, miserable, cursing and brooding and staring at the sea, catching what fish he could and eating it raw, his ink and quill and scroll cache forgotten in the recesses of the cave he'd taken to sleeping in. On the fourth day a storm rolled in, and having hit a remarkable low in his life, sitting on those rocks, shivering and staring out at sea, wishing the Elder Brother had just let him buggering _die_ that night just months before, he remained fixed throughout. The rain came down so hard he thought it would drown him, and was so cold he thought he felt ice run in his veins. The wind, too, howled and howled the way his father's hounds always thought they could...

And then, unbidden and unstoppable, childhood memories long buried beneath a hatred that had bound him came tumbling forth, tearing out of the sky and striking him in his empty little core that had suddenly started to ache. The fury of it all, the storms within and without him, broke apart what little left of himself that he had, ground it to dust, and sent it into the wind. When the clouds cleared and the wind died down, he was raw and numb and shaking—sometime during the storm, the wind and the weight of it all had brought him into foetal position, and he was dimly aware of, mixed in with the music of the waves, some hurt animal or young child whimpering in the wake of the wild. It was some time before he realized the whimpers came from his own throat, involuntary like the shivers that racked him, and if he'd remembered his dignity he'd have willed himself to stop but there was no dignity there on that craggy scrap of coast, and no identity for dignity to fix itself to.

He tried to open his eyes but the seawater brought up in the storm had corroded them so, and all he saw was white-hot, and yellow, and orange, and red, red running all down his face and his clothes, icy against the heat on his face, and as the waves sprayed against the rocks and kissed his burned cheeks his sister was frantically pouring water over his head, and he could naught but shriek a sharp, alarming wail of an irrevocably broken child all the while, the sick hissing of water turning to steam cutting the air ever more flatly every time she did. And the worst part of it all, though he was certain he could not have seen it, was the expression on her face, dreadful and vivid, a mask of terror and disgust that scarred him deeper than any coals ever could.

He laid there motionless throughout the night, whimpering still and blinking at the look in her eyes, her fear, fear of him and fear for him, and that look that she held poured into his soul and congealed there into a fear he felt of his own self. Occasionally reason would stir within him, insisting that he couldn't recall such a look on his sister's face, his sister who was always so kind and composed, and the look she wore was assembled from a hundred thousand other looks he'd received that had been so terrible and worse, but in his stomach she was staring at him with her face all full of terror and in his stomach he knew the truth, and his loathing and fear and anguish turned in him and reared its head and he saw in it something terrible.

He saw _salvation_.

No, not the salvation that the hymns extol, not the salvation of the Seven and the Faith, but a crude, scavenging sort of salvation, as the boy that he had been was destroyed and he built a man in his wake. But there were pieces of Sandor missing, pieces lost, pieces burned away...so he borrowed new pieces from whatever he could find—the hounds in his father's kennel who did not stare at him in horror—and built himself out of that. And at twelve years of age, he slouched off towards Lannisport to be born.*

But then, as morning of the fifth day broke and found him whimpering still, those pieces he had borrowed had been given up too, and he was left with less than he'd had when he'd laid down against that tree to die, or before that, when he'd killed Beric Dondarrion in the underground cave, or before that, when he'd taken from his Little Bird at knifepoint a song...

"_Little Bird_..." were the first words that Sandor croaked after the might of the storm had taken him, and before long the sound of her pet name in his ears had him weeping in earnest. _Killing is the sweetest thing there is_, he had said to her, but he had been wrong. It had stood right before him, and he had driven it away.

It was all very indulgent, he thought to himself for years afterward, how he had let her sweet memory take him and make him fresh from the salt of the sea. Thoughts of her picked him up from those rocks and took him back to the cave, and put a quill in his hand and a scroll in his lap, and it was in memories of smiles that broke her face, rare and fragile and beautiful things, where he found whatever, as the Elder Brother had suggested, he could; another kind, a truer kind, his own kind of salvation.

He hadn't earned his salvation through her, though, he would think darkly—he had left her that night, the sky awash with the colours of poison, selfishly running when he should have been saving her, from the Imp and the Queen and the rest of the Lannisters who would profane and ruin all that made her perfect and good—but he would not dwell on that night, he decided resolutely. Other nights, then, and days, when he'd stood by and _let_ them beat her, each blow chipping away at her flawless innocence and revealing to her more rapidly the sordid truth of the world, melting whatever she was made of and tainting her. She had been so _perfect_, so full of wide-eyed wonder and dreams and songs and all the other things that had been burned away from him, and for that, the Hound had scorned her. But Sandor, wherever he was trapped within the Hound's great bulk and rage, Sandor needed to preserve her, to protect her from becoming just as scarred and marred and bitter as he.

_Scarred maybe_, he thought to himself, coming back to the present, still considering his shoddy craftsmanship. _Scarred, but never as ugly. No amount of beatings could have touched a beauty like that..._

Shuddering, he hoped he was right.


	4. Sansa I

A/N: Thank you all for all the lovely reviews—you're really spurring me forward! I'll keep it up if you will! ;)

* Quote from ACOK

Now without any further ado...

**SANSA**

Sansa took a shaky breath and turned to regard herself in the looking-glass. She had waited for this day her whole life—up until her marriage to Tyrion at least, but that marriage wasn't for true, and afterwards too, once Father—_Lord Petyr_, she corrected herself, almost giddy—had explained his plans to marry her off to Harrold Hardyng and make her lady of both Winterfell and the Eyrie.

_My hair_, she thought, as tears formed in the pit of her eye, _I didn't even know how much I had missed it_... she fingered a lock thoughtfully, bringing it out before her face as if disbelieving, as if to ascertain that it was, in fact, the same auburn it had always been. It was a shade or so darker, she knew—not all the dye had come out so easily—but it was close enough to recognize. _And who knows_, she thought, _this could just be its winter shade. I haven't seen a winter my whole life—how would I know? _ Her eyes came back to the looking-glass.

The storm-gray gown she wore was a proper winter dress—sleek, shiny satin on the outside, lined with lambs'-wool, so soft and fine after the years of humble, drab, spun-wool dresses and rough-spun cotton slips. It was a practical rather than glamorous garment in the end, though—there were no seed-pearls stitched into a pattern nor any Myrish lace adorning it. _I could have put something around the bodice, if I'd had more time_, she thought almost ungratefully, tugging at the small and not-quite-accurate smoky quartz direwolf clasp that held her white and gray maiden's cloak in place.

The image reflected back at her, of her shoulders all curtained in white, brought a memory to her of another white cloak, tossed to her almost frantically, as she knelt naked and sobbing in the courtroom of the Red Keep. The course weave had been scratchy against her skin, but no velvet had ever felt so fine*. And again, that same cloak, deposited in her chambers in the wake of him as he left her, hardly white anymore with stains of battle and bravery. It was the one thing from King's Landing she most sorely missed...

But he had left her, and it was silly of her to pine after such a thing.

In her years locked away behind the facade of Alayne, Sansa had tried to teach herself useful things. With the help of Alayne's Lord Father, she learned to anticipate what others were expecting from her, what others were wanting from her, and to keep the two separate. In watching him with his feints and smiles, she learned to deceive without being untruthful, and to lead other's expectations and wants to wherever she needed them to go without letting on to her plots, and though she was yet unpracticed in these ways of slight and deception, she had faith in herself to do whatever she had to in order to reclaim her rights. _Prescience_, Lord Petyr had insisted; Sansa needed prescience if she was to become a player in the Game of Thrones, and she was not under the impression that she had a choice in the matter. She was the last living heir of Eddard Stark—Winterfell, and with it all of the north, were rightfully hers. She owed a duty to her Northmen, quick and dead both, to right the wrongs that Fate had inflicted on them and bring her people peace again.

Yet she was Sansa still, and no amount of discipline or chiding could wrest from her soul her dreaming nature. She dreamt not of songs, no; the songs she had outgrown. There were no nights glittering in the summer sun or maidens fair swept off their feet by star-crossed love or gallantry, no—those tales were empty and false, as nourishing to her soul as spun sugar. The brilliant ideal that she sighed for now, filling her head in idle moments of bliss, was Safety.

They were memories, mostly, that she dwelt upon, but they had been hijacked by her dreaming soul that filled in vividly any details she might have forgotten. She remembered, more completely than she had ever observed it, the gentle quiet of the godswood, the kindly woeful face etched onto the heart tree, her own face reflected back from the glassy pool fed by the spring, so much younger she felt then and yet it had not been so many years. She thought of her mother running the soft bristle brush through her hair, and of Robb when he'd dance with her at feasts, always finding some point in the music to pick her up and swing her in a circle. She thought of Arya, the way she never wanted to be cross with her sister but always just _was_, and Bran, who had always asked her to watch how high he could climb. And baby Rickon, clinging to her skirts and confusing her with Mother, and Jon, who would give Theon sidelong glares and smacks if he took to staring at her, which Theon often did, and Jeyne, her closest friend, and Jory, whom they both thought was so handsome, and Father...

Her dreams would dip dark after Father—she was responsible for his death, she'd decided, and she always would feel that way, even though she knew Joffrey and Cersei had tricked her into confusing her loyalty to them with her loyalty to her family, but she would push past that and think of him fondly, think of his smile, just starting to wizen, and the strength and assurance in everything he was, his presence alone the embodiment of Safety itself, and how it felt when that Safety would clasp his hand on her shoulder or on her wrist...

And then she would think of another pair of hands on her shoulders, the first time she'd felt it them so similar to her father's, when he'd turned her to save her from the fright of Ser Illyn Payne. A different sort of wistfulness would fill her up then, one that twisted an ever-present pain and shock within her, submerged her in the blackness of those eternal months she spent a caged in the Red Keep only to watch shooting out of that blackness pillars of brilliant light, glimmering moments that were too small and too few, when Sandor would emerge from wherever he'd been hiding and make her safe, only if for a moment. '_I'm no ser,'_ he had said when he had won her Father's tourney, and while he may not have sworn any holy vows with a blade on his shoulder he seemed to be the only figure in King's Landing, or maybe even the world, who showed Knightly valour and kept her safe instead of hurting her.

She dreamt of her childhood, before she knew what terror was, or paralyzing, numbing guilt, or the feeling of clutching a cloak, scratchy and fine about her shoulders, in place of everything she had ever believed in, laying in tatters at her feet.

"Milady?" a woman's voice chirped. Sansa whipped around, a spray of red settling around her gray-and-white clad shoulders. The maidservant's confusion was evident, but she knew not to ask questions. "Milord Petyr is begging entrance."

Sansa wanted to bite her lip before entering the sept, but she had to keep face. She took a sharp breath in and held it tight in her chest, trying to squeeze the nervousness that gripped her into submission and still her shaking. The cold outside had kissed her cheeks pink and left her knuckles white as bone. _I have a duty to do,_ she thought, stilling her heart and mind, _a duty to my late father, and mother, and their fathers before them. A duty to Winterfell._ "I'm ready," she whispered, her voice sounding low and hoarse in her ears, almost like a rasp.

She didn't wait for the doors to open fully before she strode in, some becoming sort of confidence seizing her and raising her up as she closed the distance between the winter outside and the comely young man within. As she put the first few rows of wedding guests behind her, a gasp rippled forth from the back of the sept. _'A direwolf,'_ she heard on their whispers, '_A Stark. Sansa.'_ Harry gave her a knowing half-smile and a little nod, and she fought the urge to beam and cry and laugh and spread her arms and shout the herald of her own return, of her rebirth. And though she left the sept with a cloak of another colour trailing behind her, in the mind of each and every witness was burned the bright white of her cloak, brighter than the sun on the summer snow.

Some hours later inside the Gates of the Moon, Sansa's wedding feast was in full swing. Her husband sat in the host's seat on her right, laughing and jesting with the rest of the small wedding party packed in tight in the great hall of the castle, receiving their congratulations with all the grace of a high lord and heir. Guests had come up to the dais in droves over the course of the meal to greet Sansa as Sansa, offering their respects for her family and professing their delight in seeing her so well. She received her attention graciously, like she knew she needed to; she didn't even mind that all these people kept reminding her of horrible, horrible things they knew nothing about—she had her _name_ back, and that was all that mattered.

Harrold—should she call him Harry?—was doing all the little things she always imagined her new husband would do; he held her hand throughout the meal, his palms warm and dry and his grip gentle, and would occasionally lean over and whisper in her ear, something trivial about the food, just to make a show of giving her affection. Between courses he would lift the hand he held to his lips to give it a chaste, flirtatious kiss. She would smile back at him and their eyes would meet, and a look would pass between them that might have seemed, to the others there, a lovers' longing stare, but they both knew better. Theirs was a look between conspirators, smiling at the progressive success of their plan. The air was thick and warm and all the guests were flushed with wine, yet nobody important seemed obscenely drunk, when Harrold gave her a little smirk and a nod, as if to say _now_, and stood to address the wedding party.

"My lords and ladies," he began charismatically, bending them all to the sound of his warm, clear tenor voice. _It would be nicer if it had a little rasp in it_, Sansa had thought upon meeting him for the first time two years before, but then, she knew why she thought such things, and shook her head at her own silliness. "I know you have all had quite a shock today upon seeing my new wife's maiden's cloak..." he caught her eye and gave her that same weighted look he'd been giving her all night, and she returned it with her same little smile. "I have been waiting _impatiently _to marry her ever since the day I met her," he said tenderly, giving her a look that would have once made her heart skip a beat, "but Lord Petyr told me I had to wait until her husband was captured and killed. 'Captured and killed?!' I cried, 'pray tell, who is this husband of hers? I'll kill him with my bare hands,' I said. And Lord Petyr," he raised his wine glass to the smirking man just to Sansa's left, "You just smiled and said, as if it were no consequence at all, 'the Imp of Lannister.'

"'The Imp of _Lannister?!_' I cried again. But this man—he is so composed, is he not?—he kept smiling until I had come to the conclusion he was leading me to. He assured me she was a maiden of the fairest beauty the realm had ever seen. And he was right, Lord Petyr," he said, making a show of kissing her hand. "She is the _loveliest _beauty I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. May I introduce to you, Lords and Ladies of the Vale, the Lady Sansa of House Stark, the rightful lady of Winterfell." A cheer broke out amongst the guests as Sansa stood, unable to contain her grin. _They're cheering for me_, she thought, giddy, as Harrold took her hand and kissed it again.

"Aye, rightful lady of Winterfell," a voice barked from the shadows as the crowd began to hush, giving Sansa a start. People craned and turned to see the speaker, who sounded so menacing, nearly shouting from the edge of the room. "And Queen in the North."

A hush went over the wedding party so thick Sansa thought she might have heard a pin drop. Then Littlefinger started to chuckle.

"Your wedding certainly does not want for excitement, my dear Sansa," he whispered to her.

A lump rose in her throat, and a familiar wash of fear hit her like a wave. She didn't understand. Was he a Frey? A Lannister man, come to take her back to the Queen? His figure appeared then, stepping out of the doorway with a dark olive roughspun hooded cloak around him, clasped at the throat with some curved, black stone. A gloved hand went to the clasp, pulling it open roughly and tossing off his cloak. He wore dark gray plate thick with dings and scratches, emblazoned with a leaping trout worked on his breastplate in black enamel. _A leaping trout_, she thought quickly, _House Tully. Look at him—you know those eyes like you know your own!_

"Uncle Brynden," she said, still not quite sure. But the old man smiled, and the great hall broke out into murmurs.

"You look so much like your mother, Sansa," he said quietly, though somehow still within earshot at the back of the room. "Your mother who was murdered alongside your brother at the hand of the Freys, all while protected under guest rights, by the suggestion of the Lannisters. And now, that turncloak Bolton, who put his blade through King Robb's heart, rules the North and lets his inhuman monster of a bastard son wreak havoc on your people.

"Though I have been in the thick of war this whole time, and the Vale I love so well has enjoyed their _peace_," he spat the word like a curse, "I think we can all agree it is time we stepped in to help right the wrongs left behind from the War of the Five Kings. The corrections start now," his sword rasped as he drew it from his scabbard and put the point to the floor, kneeling and bellowing "THE QUEEN IN THE NORTH."

Sansa's breath had fled—she knew not where—but something that felt suspiciously like elation was welling up inside her. Bronze Yohn Royce was the first to draw his own sword. "THE QUEEN IN THE NORTH!" Lord Lyonel Corbray was next, and then a torrent of swords came forth, rasping in their sheaths and clanging against the stones of the floor, and before Sansa could process what was happening to her the whole room was on their knees, and Petyr bowed his head, and her husband let go of her hand to draw his sword and kneel, giving her that same, knowing smile and whispered, "The Queen in the North."

Declaring her Queen in the North made her very own _Lords Declarant_ no less bawdy or eager to strip her naked as her nameday and deposit her in her husband's chambers. He was there already, though the ladies had left him his smallclothes for some reason (she'd have thought they'd be quick to rid him of them) and as some lord deep in his cups paused outside the door to slur something that sounded rather like "have _fun_ kiddies" he stood and met her eyes, a look that was for once hers alone. He gave her a charming smirk.

"My Queen," and he bowed deeply. She padded over to him on bare feet and ran her fingers through his hair as he straightened and kissed her gently, as they both knew he should. He sighed and drew his forearms around her waist, blinking at her and staring at her face as she slid her hands down to cup his jaw and neck, staring back. "You are very beautiful, my lady."

"And you are very handsome, my lord," she admitted, calm and content.

He seemed to think on that point for a moment before kissing her again. It was the same kiss as before—lingering, as it should be, and not without warmth or tenderness, but certainly lacking _something,_ she imagined, and unbidden her thoughts flitted to the memory of the kiss that had so long sustained her, his cruel mouth pressed down on her, tasting of blood and sweat and soot and tears and _man_...but he had left her behind that night, and Harry was _here_, holding her _now_ and kissing her the way a maiden ought to be kissed. She knew she would come to love him for all he was doing for her someday—maybe even someday soon—but selfishly in that moment she wanted none of his kind, tender kisses, or really the rest of him.

But she had a duty.

She took his hand. "Come," she said. "Let me make your son a king." And she kissed him again.

Harrold Hardyng smiled against her lips at the thought.

Twenty minutes later, a little bit of her blood had stained the bed sheet and his seed was drying on her thighs. Harrold had caught his breath beside her, and slipped an arm around her shoulders to draw her nearer to him.

"You were not in too much pain, I hope?" he whispered, his formality laced with true concern.

"Not too much," she answered truthfully, for it had all been over very quickly. It had been nothing like Myranda had ever told her—she felt no tingling or rush of wetness between her folds; there had been no throbbing, moaning, or exploding on her part (though Harrold certainly had done, she knew) and the only pleasure she felt was in knowing now that she could be with child, securing the alliance between the Vale and the North, for Harrold _would_ be Lord of the Vale; it was only a matter of time for her poor Sweetrobin, she thought sadly.

"You know," Harry began in a low, playful groan, "you're supposed to enjoy the bedding."

"And what makes you think that I did not?" she asked, smiling but indignant.

"Come on, Sansa, you didn't even _try_ pretending."

Sansa blushed. "Just because I...I..." but he silenced her with a forceful kiss.

"I'm just giving you grief, Sansa," he whispered, not rasping, "You get yourself with child. The rest will come with time. Now sleep, love. Our story is just beginning."


	5. The Queen in the North

A/N: Shout out to the Tower of the Hand Encyclopaedia ( ) for being a superb resource for quick fact-checking.

Thank you all for the wonderful reviews. I am deeply grateful. Do continue to leave them.

**THE QUEEN IN THE NORTH**

This wasn't how this scene was supposed to look.

The sloping northern moor that she had known so well as a child was covered with a thick blanket of snow, but even still, she would know it anywhere; the shape of the clearing had held in the time she'd been absent, but the trees that trimmed off the expanse of land around the Kingsroad and Winterfell weren't as tall as she remembered, and looked like they had seen hardship. But it was the state of the castle that left her well and truly disoriented.

Though it had been no less than three moon's turns since her wedding night, the cries of "_THE QUEEN IN THE NORTH" _still rang in her ears. She had let them fill her with a feeling of triumph, a feeling of victory, but—and Sansa scorned herself for not realizing this earlier—her battles were yet to be fought, and her victories yet uncertain.

She looked around at the lords and knights about her. Her great-uncle the Blackfish was seldom far from her side and never out of sight. Most of the Lords of the Vale were present, and even those who were not had sent many of their vassals and foot soldiers on with the Queen's escort. Lord Petyr was absent, forced to stay behind with Lord Robert by the Lords Declarant out of a wariness for his ambition. Sansa couldn't have said she disagreed with them, and though at times it would have been a comfort to have Petyr's guidance, it was liberating to finally be out from under his thumb. Lyonel Corbray of Heart's Home, where they had stopped for a fortnight to plan their invasion, was nearby chatting with Lord Godric Borrell of Sweetsister, who had provided many of the ships they sailed from Heart's Home around the Paps, through the sisters and up into the White Knife. It had been maddening, to make the journey from Heart's home to White Harbor so quickly, and to have to move so slowly up the White Knife, rowing against the current as silently as they could to keep from giving themselves away. It had been so _long_, and she was so close to _home_...but now they had finally arrived, and (though she had known to expect a ruin) she was suddenly overcome with the realization that she had so, so much farther to go. Everything in her wanted to spin around, to vault off her horse and collapse in the snow, turned away from the eyesore that made a mockery of her beloved Winterfell, and weep like the young girl she was.

Instead, she sighed and bit back on the lump in her throat, thinking of her father, mother, brothers and sisters all. _Stay strong. You have promises to keep, and miles to go before you sleep._*

She nudged her horse onward, and led the column towards what had once been the portcullis of the greatest stronghold of the North.

To her surprise, King Stannis himself awaited her on the interior of the ruined portcullis, accompanied by a woman wearing nothing but a thin red dress. The King looked well bundled-up in his furs, but the lady must have been freezing. Sansa was reluctant enough to let down her hood and unwrap her face in the ferocity of the northern winter, but she did what was needed of her. Harrold brought his horse up close beside her but did not move out in front of her—this was her battle, he had said to her some nights before, holding her properly after their duty had been done. He would be at her side to support her, he had said, and was keeping true to his word, but he would not take the lead from her. "You are the _Queen_, after all," he had said with a smile, kissing her hair and trailing his fingers along her shoulder, "and I'm just the heir to some other kingdom."

"You're forgetting that most of my escort are men of yours, husband," she had said, not meaning to sound as cool as she did. Harrold had only shrugged.

"They're still the ones who declared you Queen. I didn't hear any 'King in the Vale' that night—did you?" He tilted her chin up to look at him. She sighed.

"I suppose not." And tucked her head into his chest to sleep.

The red woman was the first to speak, with a soft fluidity to her speech that sounded to Sansa much like Asshai'i.

"Lord Harrold. Lady Sansa. It is good to see you have fared so well on your long journey home."

"You have been expecting me," she said, confusion mounting within her alongside something that felt like rage—had someone betrayed her secrecy and sent forth the raven? Could it have been Petyr? Why would anyone..._Calm yourself,_ she chided herself. _Let Stannis explain._

But it was the woman who spoke again. "The Lord of Light has been good enough to show me your arrival in his fires—none of your honourable Knights of the Vale have betrayed your confidence, Lady Sansa."

Sansa felt relieved, but only for a moment. _The Lord of Light? Fires? What?_

"You're speaking to the Queen in the north, woman. Her style is _Your Grace_," Lord Godric said roughly from behind her.

"We'll see about that," Stannis said, matching Lord Borrell's tone. "I mean to treat with Lady Sansa, and see if we can come to an agreement." He met her eyes, perhaps in an attempt to intimidate her, but she stared right back at him, blue eyes on blue. She had become immune to intimidation some time ago. _My skin has turned to porcelain, to ivory, to steel_.**

"An agreement would be preferable," Sansa agreed, letting her voice prickle with the hint of a threat. Stannis held her gaze for a moment longer before giving a sharp nod to his right, and the portcullis began to lurch upward.

"Will you go in alone, Your Grace?" The Blackfish murmured. She nodded to him.

"I think it's best." And besides, she wouldn't be alone, not completely. Harrold would be there, after all.

Sansa tried her best to keep her composure, but the sight of the ruined courtyard was almost too much. Had it not been for the snow, a sob might have broken through her despite all her attempts to ice her heart; where the snow was not blanketing she could see smoke stains from vicious fires, and chunks of the walls were missing, piled presumably under the overlarge heaps of snow beneath them. The whole scene was morbid and grim—there were soldiers littered about, all with wispy beards and hungry eyes that told more of their stories than their mouths ever could. Harrold leapt off his courser to help her dismount, leading her by the hand to Stannis, who offered her his arm as Harrold took the red woman on his; though she wanted to look at her feet, Sansa forced her chin up and set her jaw as they swept through the courtyard and into the great hall.

Her heart dropped into her stomach when she stepped into the hall where she had broken her fast every day of her childhood—soldiers were camped about everywhere, gathering around the hearths in the wall and holding morsels of food over the flames with the tips of their dirks and swords, sleeping furs spread out hither and thither, the whole place reeking of privy and stable and rot. There were little patches here and there where the snow had gotten in, new and fresh but not without a crust of filth creeping up from the floor it sat upon. It was extremely distressing; she could have railed at Stannis for the state of ruin the hall was in, but she knew it wasn't entirely his fault, and that railing at him would hardly be conducive to negotiations, and so she bit her tongue and tried to relax her expression into one that suited a Queen.

"Devan," Stannis snapped not unkindly at a boy in a dull gray surcoat with a ship worked all in black thread upon the breast, save for a white round shape emblazoned on the sail, "bring the Lady Sansa and her husband our bread and salt. And mulled wine, for the cold. We will be in my solar."

_My Father's solar,_ she corrected silently.

"I assure you, my lady, that guests' rights mean more to me than it evidently does to the Lannisters and their bedfellows the Freys. It was a terrible injustice that befell your brother. You have my deepest condolences." His voice was very formal, but even so, there was something compassionate hidden in the utility of it all. Though he was rough about the edges, considerably so (but weren't they all, in the bleakness of winter?) there was something Kingly about his demeanour that his brother never exhibited. "The first chance I get, I'll see to it that the Freys are served justice."

"I appreciate your commitment to justice, my lord. It is very admirable, and a comforting quality to see in a King."

"Thank you, my lady," he said dubiously, evidently unsure if she was being serious with him. She heard without listening for it Harrold making his polite and charming conversation with the red woman on his arm, complimenting her on some jewel she wore. At the door to the solar, they paused. Sansa tried not to let the weight of her memories pull her thoughts away from the moment, but she could see it all too clearly—there, in that windowsill, she and her friend Jeyne Poole would watch as her brothers trained with Ser Rodrik in the yard, filling the castle with the song of their steel. "It occurs to me that I have forgotten my manners, Lady Sansa, I do apologize," he said, ripping her from her memories sharply. "May I introduce Melisandre of Asshai. She is a high priestess of the Lord of Light, whom I have taken as my God. She is also my most trusted advisor."

The red woman named Melisandre took Sansa's hand with a smile. "My Lady."

"Pleased to make your acquaintance," Sansa replied. _Chirping again, Little Bird?_ something deep in her psyche rasped.

There was a roaring fire in the hearth within. Stannis pulled out a chair for her beside his own seat at the head of the meeting-table, and Harrold pulled out one for the red woman across from her, beside the fire. Stannis took the head of the table while Harrold swept around to the seat beside Sansa, resting his hand on her shoulder for but a moment, a gesture of support. She straightened herself and settled her hands in her lap as the squire brought the fare. Sansa awaited no invitation, tearing into the ring of bread the moment it appeared on the table before her with long, quick fingers, taking a pinch of the salt with a morsel of bread and dropping it daintily into her mouth. The king himself poured her a goblet of the warm wine, and she took a chaste sip off it to warm her lips with its heat.

"Now that the courtesies have been observed..." she said, settling back into her chair while Harrold fumbled with the bread behind her.

Sansa was frank about what she wanted. She wanted the North. Stannis was loath to give it to her, but eventually relented as he listened to her reason.

"I hid in the Eyrie for three years with Lord Petyr Baelish," she began, "and however you may feel about the man, sire, you cannot deny that he knows the ways of coin. I do not profess to be as knowledgeable as he, but I know enough to know that the flow of coin will not be impeded by a separation of our kingdoms. Were I to swear fealty to you, my lord, we would owe you a tax, here in the North, and the Vale too. Fair enough, but we in the North produce little and less of many necessities, ones that the rare occasion of a surplus in the Vale could hardly account for—I'm thinking of food and cloth in particular—and were we to be a separate nation from yours, my lord, you could impose whatever custom and duty you wished on your trade with us. You would be much faster in expanding the wealth of your kingdom if you were to exploit this, whereas if you exploit taxation, who is to say my people wouldn't rise up in rebellion again?" It might have sounded like a threat to others, but Stannis could see what she was getting at. He thought it over for a long, cold minute, his fist clenching and unclenching as he stared into the hearth.

"I am happy to discuss any sort of alliance you would prefer," she added, starting to worry.

He rubbed the short black beard on his chin and sighed. "You have more wisdom than I anticipated, child. Aye, and more wit too." He took a sip of his goblet of water, his eyes still on the fire before him.

_I am no child_, she wanted to say, _I am the Queen in the North. The Lady of Winterfell._ But she did not.

Stannis glanced up at his red priestess, still rubbing his chin, and regarded her. "What say you, Melisandre?"

"I agree with you, my lord. Lady Sansa is wise in the ways of coin. She has the right of it," the woman said, taking Sansa aback with her nonchalance in speaking words so bold to her king.

The king sighed again, and dropped his hand. "So it's the North you want? And the Vale too..." the last thought was not a question. Before she could respond, the red woman interjected.

"She wants not the Vale for herself, sire, but for her son," Melisandre said, looking over at Sansa, "when she has one."

Sansa nodded—she had been about to say such a thing. The king was silent again for a long time.

"Devan," he finally barked. The squire hurried in from the doorway. "Bring us a map of the Seven Kingdoms. We have a border to set," and he met Sansa's eyes, again blue on blue. "I am not getting any younger, and I am sick of fighting wars."

"You would have our support, my lord, in any war you required us," Harrold said, speaking up for the first time. Sansa agreed.

"Don't say such things if you don't mean them," he said harshly.

"We do," Sansa said, without a second thought. "I mean to make a common cause with you, sire. I am as tired as you are of war. And winter has come—it is not time for such foolishness as summer breeds."

He thought on that for a moment as the squire laid the map before him. "Aye, my lady...your words are truth..." And they leaned together over the crisp new map.

Sansa awoke sharply in the darkness before the dawn, suddenly sick. The quarters of her childhood had been vacated for her and her husband to occupy, and her men had made common camp with Stannis' in the yards and the great hall. Their agreements had included temporary cohabitation of the castle, until the King could push south again to unseat the Lannisters; scores of her own Knights of the Vale, and Northmen too, would accompany him as allied forces. After the borders were drawn and the treaties written there had been a modest meal in the great hall, where Stannis recognised her before the whole of his gathered forces as the Queen in the North, and her whole being had swelled, triumphant, victorious, proud.

Now that meal was coming back up again, and as she heaved into the privy she wondered what it could have been that sickened her so. The food had all been warm and fresh (the cold of winter is a preservative, after all) but she hadn't overeaten her fill. She hadn't had much wine—not while there was warm, honeyed milk to drink in its stead—so it wasn't drunkenness that made her sick. _What, then?_

The idea came to her as a cloud forms in the sky—slowly at first, then building up strength until it poured down on her in a torrent. Her moons' blood had been absent as long as she'd been queen. _Three moons...that must mean..._her hands flitted to her abdomen instinctively. _She wants not the Vale for herself, sire, but for her son," _the red priestess had said. Had she already known? How? _Some eastern sorcery...gods, three moons..._

Harrold was stirring in the room behind her, and muttered something groggily that sounded like her name. She turned, dabbed at her lip, and walked on shaky legs over to him.

"I think I've got news for you, love."

_* Paraphrased from Robert Frost's 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening'_

_** From _A Storm of Swords


	6. Sandor II

**SANDOR**

Ever since the storm had come for him, ripping open again all the old wounds he thought had healed, wresting away all his strength and will and bitterness and leaving him trembling at the sound of his own name, the Elder Brother had encouraged him to write every day. He'd grown up in a keep with a maester; he'd gotten his letters young; so many years without practice, though, left the quill clumsy in his hand, slanting and sloping across the scroll in uneven and poorly-portioned words. They were _his_ words, though, and the only thing he had that told his story true.

In the moons he spent in that seaside cave, he wrote about his past: the hurts he'd sustained, the pain he'd inflicted, the things he regretted and the things that he didn't. Scrolls upon scrolls he opined and analysed, mocked and admired. He told the scrolls things he couldn't have told anyone else—things he could hardly admit to himself. The trend continued after he came back to the Quiet Isle, though the frantic quality of his entries eventually calmed, and he began to write about the world around him as it affected his life. Some days, if the food was especially good or poor, or he'd gotten a hold of some wine, he would write about the Quiet Isle. Other days, if a conversation they'd had had been particularly insightful or annoying, he would write about the Elder Brother.

Anything to keep himself from writing about her.

He had tried, well and often for about a year after his time in the cave, but Sandor knew how to recognize futility when he saw it. He could never do her justice. He'd pen a line, read it over, and it would mock her—he'd strike it out. He'd pen another, glancing back, and he would see himself as an idealistic sap—he struck those too. Before long, he was left with entries of cold, undeniable, unsatisfying facts about her, at once entirely real and completely untrue.

When he wasn't writing, Sandor was building. Coffins, mostly—they were in high demand at the Quiet Isle—but he'd tried his hand at other things too. He'd built himself a writing-desk, and a chair to go with it, taller than most tables and chairs, and better suited to his unusual height. When the Warrior's altar had broken down in its advanced age, Sandor built the sept a new one. He'd even tried his hand at decoration—carving little knotted patterns around the edges of the altar. His first foot or so of pattern had been awkward and ugly, but a little while later he managed to get the twists and crosses to look even enough, when one wasn't looking at them directly.

That evening, though, he was building a coffin.

It was a small thing for a small child, hardly three-foot long and one foot wide. He had stayed late in his workshop to build it—the Elder Brother hadn't asked it of him yet, but the little girl in the sickbeds had been there three moons' turns and was edging closer to the Stranger every day. Sandor knew it would be easier to build if he still had hope she wouldn't need it, so he built it early, just in case.

When he emerged from his workshop the sky had already been black for an hour or two, and he knew that other brothers and novices would be taking their evening meals then; he was accustomed to going into the kitchens early, eating alone, and retreating to his room, to fill his dreams with his Little Bird, or fill his scrolls with her absence. There was a blast of warmth that hit him heavy in the face and chest as he opened the door and slid into the little eating-room. There was an empty place right by the door—probably because of the cold, he figured. He took it anyway. He didn't mind.

Sandor ate with the brothers stewed horsemeat and fresh brown bread—nothing special, but filling and hot, and he was thankful of both those aspects. There was no wine to be had (there hardly ever was) so Sandor drank water, and was about to scurry off to his room and get drunk off something else when the Elder Brother came back into the room (he hadn't observed him leaving, Sandor realized) looking serious.

"Just when we thought these wars were over with," he shook his head. There was a slip from a raven in his hands. _Dark wings, dark words,_ Sandor thought. The Elder Brother looked up, right at him, and gave him a sort of lingering look before turning down to the writing before him. Sandor's stomach dropped. _Has it got to do with me?_

"This raven comes from Saltpans." Sandor cringed. His name was blasphemous in Saltpans. "It begins with word that Lord Tyrion Lannister of Casterly Rock has perished by Dragonfire near the fighting pits of Meereen."

_The Imp_, Sandor sneered inwardly, _he sure died screaming. Dragonfire is worse than wildfire. I'll bet the bugger was cooked better than I'd hoped._ But then he remembered why he'd wanted the Imp to burn and his heart could have stopped—_where is Sansa? Burned? Dead?!_

As if he'd heard his thoughts, the Elder Brother continued. "His wife, the Lady Sansa of House Stark, heir to Winterfell, emerged from hiding in the Eyrie—" _Safe!_ "and wed a certain Harrold Hardying, heir apparent to the Vale—Sandor, please," the Elder Brother pleaded harshly, pulling him from his thoughts. Apparently he had stood to leave, knocking his chair and nearly his table over in the process. _I'm out of my mind._ He paused. He could feel his blood boiling and his chest heaving. He didn't even know why.

"According to the word I've just received, the Lords and Knights of the Vale have declared her Queen in the North, and set off to retake Winterfell from Lord Stannis."

His anger surged, in place of fear perhaps: Stannis was unyielding, and there would be fighting there. If the Little Bird's buggering shiny Knights of the Vale managed to do Stannis in, then they'd have the Boltons on them. And though he knew little of Boltons, he knew enough to want them as far from his Little Bird as Westeros would allow. _Farther, maybe. The depths of the Seven Hells...Bugger it all..._ Just when he'd heard the Little Bird was safe, he was forced to deal with the fact that she was marching to her death. Without him.

_Seven buggering hells._

He was not aware that he was shaking.

"Lord Stannis capitulated and ceded her the North. Eventually the Vale will pass to her husband, and their offspring will rule both kingdoms as one." He looked up and gave Sandor a brief nod. He flew through the door, nearly tearing it off its hinges.

He didn't even know where he was going.

Barrelling out into the biting-cold night, all he wanted to do was scream and run. He wanted to put his sword into something. He wanted _wine_.

The most beautiful thing in the world had just been recovered. Three years he'd suffered the thought she was lost. And now, at that very moment, she hurried towards destruction.

_Without_ him.

He went to the stables first, saddled up Stranger, and nearly mounted before he realized he hadn't even a coat to wear. He rode the horse through to his room and burst in; frantic to pack whatever he could need as quickly as his arms would allow. The Elder Brother was waiting for him.

"I take it you've given this some thought, over the years. What you would do if she suddenly turned up." It was not a question.

"You're sitting on my cloak."

"That's not an answer."

"Where's my bloody sword?"

"Sandor."

"What's there to think about, Brother? She's there. I'm not. And the pretty Little Bird isn't coming to me." _She's marching to her death. Without me._

The Elder Brother was silent, watching him roll up a bedroll and buckle on his sword. His mail didn't fit him so well anymore—his breastplate either—but he'd have to remedy that later. He grabbed his brother's robe and made for the door.

"Stop. Talk to me."

"About what, Brother? You want to hear my bloody travel plans?" Sandor sneered.

"Why are you doing this?" His voice was not pleading.

"Why am I bloody...have you been _listening?_ Once, just once, in three years..." Why was he doing this? _Bugger him_.

"I need to hear that you know why you're doing this."

"Because I have to."

"Why?"

"Bloody _hells, _man, I've _always _had to. If I'd known she was in the Vale, I would have left this buggering place the moment I thought I could walk. I'd have limped the whole way unarmed and unarmored if it'd get me there, just to lay down and die at her feet."

"You're avoiding the question."

"Bugger you."

"Sandor."

"_Because I have to see my Little Bird again!_" He raged. "Because she is the _last good thing_ in the world, and I will not be able to live with myself if I let anything or anyone else get close enough to bloody _breathe_ on her..." A lump had been rising in his throat the whole time he spoke, and finally it choked him. Something akin to a sob squeaked its way out of him, and his eyes were getting warm and foggy. He brought a fist up to his mouth, to stop the cries that trembled behind it—he couldn't stand the vulnerability, the honesty of that moment—rage took over from fear—and he roared, throwing his fist into the nearest thing, the wall, hearing a crack.

The pain brought him down some. His hand ached and his knuckles were bleeding. It looked bad. The wall looked worse. He'd put a hole through a section of plaster that was already starting to crumble. _Some other sorry bastard can patch that up_, he thought, not apologetic, _I'm getting the hell out of here._

"Is that a bloody good enough reason for you?" he growled, looking up from his hand.

"Depends. Is it a good enough reason for you, to go and wreck your peace?"

"Go and wreck my..." he bristled, his hand throbbing, and sighed. "_She is my peace,_" he whispered.

"By all means, go then," the Elder Brother said, sounding stiff, maybe disappointed. Sandor didn't care. "Take your tools with you. You never know what sorts of things you might need to fix or build."

Sandor snatched his cloak from the Elder Brother, and rasped, "thank you, Brother. For everything."

"I hope you find her, Sandor."

Charging out into the cold towards his workshop, he whispered to himself, "I'll die before I lose her again," and hoped that it would be true.


	7. Sansa II

**SANSA**

The Queen rose before the sun every day, lifted from sleep as though the very movement of the stars had wrenched her from her bed. Wrapped up in furs and blankets she would lean by the window in her chamber and wait for it, peeking around the moth-eaten smoke-stained curtains that had been hastily hung for her comfort to watch the blue-gray snow turn yellow and orange and pink as the morning broke on her kingdom. The first glimmering shard of the sun would breach the horizon tentatively, and she would stare at it until her eyes hurt, wanting to keep it there, holding fast to that very first moment of day, the one moment that belonged not to the Queen but to Sansa, but all too soon the red priestess would start her morning chants, and Sansa turned into the Queen again, and she would don her little iron circlet and face the needs of her kingdom.

_I am the last Stark born in winter,_ she thought to herself that morning, _I am the last Stark alive. My pack is gone. 'The pack dies, but the lone wolf survives...' is that right, father? Or were you wrong about that, too?_

So lost in thought was she that she did not hear Harrold's breathing start, or the bedclothes rustle as he sat up to watch her fix her hair in her looking-glass. It gave her a start to turn around and see him there, leaning up on his arm in their bed, looking at her with eyes all soft and even. She suddenly felt more exposed in that moment than she had the night before, when he had tried his best to please her, and she had been embarrassed that he was unsuccessful. She had wanted to pretend, at least to give him some sense of accomplishment, but she had not the vaguest idea how. He kept taking her chin between his fingers to kiss her, last night and every night they did their marital duty, but his fingers were too small, too soft, too gentle, and his kiss so tender, so kind. It was absolutely absurd. Sansa would have done unspeakable things not three years before even for the _hope_ that she could one day have a husband so handsome and kind. _He is my happy ending,_ she would think insistently, _he is right out of those songs I loved so much..._

"Goodness! I did not hear you wake, my lord."

He gave her a little smile. "You look radiant this morning, Sansa."

"Thank you, my lord," she blushed. Something inside of her was squirming, and suddenly she felt heartsick. Guilty. "How will you break your fast, my—"

"You can call me Harry, you know," he interrupted softly. Guilt twisted within her some more.

"Forgive me my...Harry." The name was foreign to her. She looked at her slippers, at the stones beneath her feet. She heard the bedclothes rustle again, and suddenly he was crouched at her feet, his fingers on her chin, small and soft and gentle and wrong.

"There is nothing to forgive," and kissed her, barely touching his lips to hers for a still, endless moment before he stood and began to dress himself. "But I interrupted you. What were you asking me?"

"...Only what you would like to break your fast on," _my lord,_ she bit back, making for the door as fast as courtesy would allow.

"Whatever they have the most of. I should not want to go about demanding anything precious."

"That is very good of you, _Harry_," she said truthfully.

He smiled at her. "I try, my lady."

The frigid air of the hallway was a warm relief.

They broke their fast with the King of the Southron Kingdoms, as he now styled himself, on bread fried in lard and a little oat porridge. She could only imagine what the soldiers were eating. _Winter is here_, she thought, _in the winter, we must not be wanting. _Stannis was cold and direct without being discourteous, and the priestess Melisandre making up for his lack of warmth in conversation. Sansa was finding her feminine company quite a treat in the castle all filled up with men, even if there was something uncomfortably direct about her manner. It was no wonder, Sansa thought, that many of her Knights whispered that the red lady was Stannis' true Queen—Selyse had not even deigned to come to Winterfell once after winter had set in on the north—and Sansa felt as though the priestess had some things she could yet teach her about Queening. _Anyone is better than Cersei_, she thought bitterly, nearly choking on her bread. Aside from her lord husband, Melisandre was the first person Sansa told of the child growing inside her.

"The ravens will go out today, Your Grace," Stannis said, his first words of the morning characteristically tactical and utilitarian. Sansa nodded, finished chewing, and replied.

"Excellent. I should like to send out my own message to my Lords Bannermen out with them."

"As you wish, my lady."

Their forks and knives rang against their plates and echoed in the emptiness of the great hall.

_Now is as good a time as any to ask_, she realized, but was still reluctant. _Come now. Be strong._

"What do we know of Roose Bolton and his host? What of the Dreadfort?" She knew some things, to be sure, but rumours were just that. "Start from the beginning. I want to be sure I have my facts right." Her heart was racing. Stannis cleared his throat, but Lionel Corbray interrupted.

"This is hardly a conversation to break one's fast over, Your Grace—" but Sansa held up her hand.

"Time is of the essence, my lord. I should have asked this question with the first breath I took after our treaties were drawn," and it had been eating at her for two weeks. But as excruciating as _not_ knowing—not knowing if Roose and his bastard were alive or imprisoned or dead, if the Dreadfort was intact or under siege or sacked, which lords were loyal to them and which would be loyal to her, and (a hot flash of satisfaction and rage would burst through her stomach at the thought) when she could have their heads off, to adorn the barren, broken walls around her—she childishly had avoided the question, for fear of misliking the answer.

"I am surprised a taken you so long, my lady," Melisandre prefaced before Stannis spoke.

"I assume you know that the Boltons allied themselves with the Freys and conspired to murder your brother," he began.

Sansa nodded coldly. "They say Roose Bolton himself drove his blade through my brother's heart."

"That he did, my lady," Stannis said sadly. Anger flooded her anew. "On the advice of your bastard Brother, who was Lord Commander on the Wall until his brothers stabbed him in the back..."

Sansa choked, and all the colour drained from her face. "Jon?!" _Even Jon? Gods above, have you taken _everyone_ from me? _She felt the urge to cry out, so she sat up straighter and clenched her jaw.

"Yes, my lady. It was a traitorous affair. But I have no power on the Wall, he made that quite plain," his voice hinted at some past contempt, but he left it be. "I took my host south, along with any wildlings and hill tribes who would follow, and retook Deepwood Motte from Asha Greyjoy, who held it quite poorly. That won me the Glovers and Mormonts, who have presented themselves to you, I trust." They had. Sansa had accepted oaths of fealty from Alysane Mormont and Gawen Glover, as their parents and heads of house had been presumed dead for some time, the very night she arrived to reclaim Winterfell. "We have the Manderlys too, though they put on a face for the pretenders on the Iron Throne down in White Harbor. They sent my hand, Ser Davos Seaworth, out to look for your...for _some_thing on the isle of Skagos, after a rumour he heard..." a look of pain came over his face, though he hid it well. "We have yet to hear from him. I can only assume that he met his end in those mountains."

"May the Lord of Light bless him," Melisandre murmured.

"After Deepwood Motte we came south to Winterfell. Your sister was supposed to be marrying the Bastard of Bolton, one Ramsay Snow, legitimised by King Tommen in thanks for taking Winterfell from Theon Greyjoy. It was a ruse, though, and everyone knew it—Cersei dressed some little northern girl in a direwolf cloak, some servant who came south with you, and called her Arya and sent her off...Poor girl was so broken she didn't even know her own name when we finally got to her. Theon Greyjoy brought her to us, caught and starving out in the early winter snows as we were, and between Theon and Asha, Melisandre informed me she could win me Winterfell, if we gave them to the nightfires. And so we did, and...it was truly incredible, my lady..."

Melisandre interjected to explain. "The Lord of Light set the falsehearted ablaze, smoking our enemies and giving us Winterfell." She beamed, as though she had done it herself.

"Their armies just burst into flame. It...it was unlike anything I've ever seen..." Stannis tried to say matter-of-factly.

_Sorcery_, Sansa thought, eyeing Melisandre in her periphery. _I should have suspected as such._

"A small host, along with Roose Bolton and his bastard, _did_ manage to steal back to the Dreadfort, though. A host of wildlings from beyond the wall has tried laying siege to them, as revenge for killing their King-Beyond-The-Wall, and from what I understand, they have had some success. But Bolton and his bastard are still alive, my lady, and glutting themselves on their winter stores."

Sansa grit her teeth. "They are weakened, though?"

"Crippled, my lady."

"Good." Her voice was low, growling, even. She thought of another low, growling voice, and wished she had him here. Sighing a little, she turned to her great-uncle, named her Hand, and asked "How many Knights should I send after him?"

"No more than a few dozen, Your Grace."

"Four dozen, then. Of my most ferocious Knights—I want them stealthy and lethal. Kill his host, raid his stores, and bring me Bolton and his bastard, _alive,_" she hissed.

"It will be done, Your Grace."

She sighed, picking up her fried bread again, now cold. "Once we are successful, send foot soldiers to gather anything that might help rebuild Winterfell. We will take their rushes, their linens, their furniture—anything we can—and use it to make Winterfell great again."

"How very resourceful, Your Grace," Godric Borrell complimented.

"Winter is here," she said calmly, "we must not be wasteful." And dropped the last of her bread in her mouth.

"Uncle Brynden," Sansa whispered as they stood from the table to begin the day, leading him by his elbow away from the others for a word. "I was wondering...would you be able to teach me to swing a sword?"

Her uncle looked baffled. "Pardons, Your Grace?"

She started to bite her lip, but stopped herself. "I need to know how to swing a sword. To...to behead a man." She was trembling at the thought. _Still yourself._ _You are not some weak southron Queen. You are a Stark of Winterfell. You are of the North._

"And why would you need to know such a horrible thing as that, Your Grace?"

She took a breath to steady herself, and turned her chin up. "My father used to tell my brothers 'our blood is that of the First Men, and our way is the old way'. He said 'the man who speaks the sentence should swing the sword.' I may not be a man, uncle, but I would rule as though I were one."

The Blackfish blinked at her. "As you wish, Your Grace. Would you practise today?"

"Just before luncheon, I think. I must prepare myself for the arrival of the Boltons," she said thoughtfully, hugging her arms and pacing over to a long window, looking out into brilliant, endless white.

"Do you have a plan for them, Your Grace?"

A wicked, righteous smile played across her lips as she stared out into her winter. "I do."

Brynden Tully was quiet behind her for a moment, waiting. "What _is _it, if it please Your Grace?"

Sansa looked languidly over her shoulder, not quite meeting his eyes. "My Lords Bannermen will collect at Winterfell to swear me fealty at the next turn of the moon." She looked back out the window, hiding a look of deep sadness as it swept over her face. "Once they have all arrived, I shall do for the Boltons what justice is due. I _must_ do it the old way. I have to show them I am of the _North_." She spun to look at him, biting back tears and snapping herself into a rigid, perfect posture. "Ever since I went south with my father to King's Landing, people have thought me stupid, weak and spineless, a pawn in their great Game of Thrones. But I am a Stark of Winterfell. I am _not_ stupid. I am not_ weak!_ And sure as the eastern sunrise I am no _pawn_. My Lords Bannermen need to see that I am as much a Queen in the North as Robb was a King. I will execute the Boltons, publicly and personally. I have the Tully look, I know, but I will show them _all_ the North in me."

Her great-uncle thought on that for a moment. "A wise plan, Your Grace."

A lump rose in her throat as she smiled. "Thank you, Ser Brynden."

_No. No no no. Gods, please, no._ All she could think was _no._

The afternoon had begun innocently enough. Sansa had fetched herself a scrap of parchment and a piece of charcoal, meaning to assemble an assessment of the damage of her home so she could begin to prioritize the rebuilding process. She started with what she knew best—the kitchens—and found them nearly untouched, after giving the cooks a frightful start. Then she visited all the sleeping-chambers, noting any room that was lacking some integral piece of furniture, checking the availability of all the privys, making sure all the windows latched. She wandered the corridors with her hands along the walls, feeling for any leaks or poor circulation in the water channelled up through the castle from the hot spring below them. She saved her walk of the perimeter for last; the curtain walls would require years of attention before they were restored to her former glory, and as strong as she was, Sansa dreaded any moment she would visualize the extent of the hurt her home had sustained.

Out in the courtyards, common soldiers crunched themselves about small fires, talking and dicing, some sparring to keep their blood warm and their skills sharp. Dressed as warmly as she was with whatever the castle had left, there was little save the iron circlet about her brow and the striking beauty of her face to distinguish her from any other tall woman about the castle. The soldiers paid her no mind.

One group seemed to be having a particularly good time, and after having walked a quarter of the way around and noted nearly eight score paces' worth of wall that needed rebuilding, her heart was heavy, and she stopped to watch their merriment, hoping to find some sort of cheer in it all.

They were playing a game she knew from her time with Queen Margery and her ladies—they all had scraps of paper stuck to their foreheads, each with the name of some famous knight, king or lord scrawled on it in crude hand. Sansa paced around and looked at the characters represented: Randyll Tarly, Tyrion Lannister—_my late lord husband,_ she thought strangely—Aegon I the Conqueror, Nymeria Queen of the Rhoynar—_Arya...where are you, Arya?_ Renly Baratheon, and, in the crudest hand of all, _The Hound_.

Her chest squeezed for a moment and she stepped closer so she could hear them. Aegon had just figured himself out, apparently, and they were laughing together.

"You _do_ realise it's easy to figure out you've got Aegon the Conqueror on your 'ead if you bloody put 'im in every game we play," he said pointedly to Randyll Tarly. Sansa kept her eyes trained on The Hound, who was the next to speak.

"A'right, a'right, _my _turn...Am I living or dead?"

"Dead," the men around him answered.

Sansa's heart turned to ice and fell through her stomach to the ground beneath her feet.

_No._

"I didn't know he were dead..." Tyrion said quietly. No one responded to him.

"A'right...were I a man?"

"Aye," came the chorus.

_How?!_ Sansa wanted to run to them and scream. _How did he die!?_

"Were I a knight?"

"Aye," a few began.

"No 'e weren't!" Tyrion protested.

"Is that right?" Aegon asked.

"I heard it true. From 'is very lips, I did."

"And when did you 'ear anything from '_is bleedin' lips?_"

"If I said as much, I'd be givin' it away, now wouldn't I?"

_TELL ME HOW HE DIED!_

"So not a knight, then...but it's unclear?"

"That would be the way it seems, wouldn't it?" Aegon bit dryly.

"Shut up...Not a knight...a man...were I a lordly sort?"

"No—well..."

"I 'ear 'is brother 'ad a keep, I thought."

"So I've got a brother, have I?"

"Aww, there you go again, givin' things away!" Aegon smacked Tyrion in the arm.

"Is my _brother_ a knight?"

"Yes!" came the chorus.

Sansa would have walked over and strangled them for the answer, if she had thought she could move.

"...were I a flower?"

"No."

"A lion?"

"Yes."

"Were I known by another animal's name?"

"Yes."

"Am I the Hound?"

"Yes!"

He tore the card off his forehead and looked at it. "The Hound was too a bleedin' knight, you _bastards!_"

"He were _not! _I was at the 'and's tourney, 'e nearly bit the Knight of the Flowers' face off for callin' 'im 'ser'!" Tyrion insisted. "'ow is it 'e came to be dead?"

"Beric Dondarrion found 'im after 'e did what 'e done to Saltpans," Tarly said. "Ran 'im through with 'is flaming sword, the bugger."

_A flaming sword? Oh, Sandor..._

She couldn't hold it in anymore. A sob broke through her and made way for more. She turned on her heel and ran into the castle, through all the guards and the great hall and past Melisandre and her lord Husband and straight into her chamber, where she locked the door, pounced onto her bed, and wailed.

It had all hit her at once. The ruin of her home, the death of her half-brother, her loveless marriage, all of it, and now Sandor, another one of the few things she held dear, fled from this world. "Why?!" she cried angrily to the gods, her face all red and her nose all stopped up, "Why are you doing this to me? Why? _Why?!_ Oh, _SANDOR!"_

And his name was her mantra as she cried, shuddering and rocking herself on her bed, clamping her knees to her chest as if she could somehow keep herself together if she held tightly enough. Harrold begged entrance at several different points, once threatening to break down the door, but his kind, tender kiss was the last thing she wanted while she cried over another, better man than he; the loss of his iron grip on her wrist, and his terrible, burned face, and his _Safety_...

_Oh, _Sandor...


	8. Sandor III

A/N: I want to thank everyone who's been giving me such thoughtful reviews. Please don't hesitate to let me know what you're thinking! Trust me! I want to hear it!

**SANDOR**

And that was it. The last of his cheese was gone.

Stranger had been picking through the forest blind with snow for the last three days. The game had all but disappeared—the ravens in the trees seemed to be the only other things alive in the sparse wood of the Barrowlands. He had ridden hard out of the Quiet Isle, his Stranger seeming just as thrilled as he was to be getting out of there. They had not rested until midday-next, for fear of stopping too close to Saltpans; even still, Sandor knew he had to be careful to keep his face hidden, his tone respectful and his diction common. He had been making camp under the stars for the same reasons—anonymity and speed. Getting into a fight anywhere would slow him down—and Sandor would not be slowed.

_My Little Bird, a Queen in the North. Who guards you, my Queen? What buggering piss of a boy thinks himself man enough to protect you?_ He snarled to himself. As much as he wanted to, he knew he could not bust into Winterfell howling for her, killing every bloody _Knight_ that stood between him and his Little Bird. _They're all liars. Remember what I told you about hounds, Little Bird? _She must need him. She always had. Nothing would ever change that.

Once he had crossed north of the Neck, though, the landscape changed completely. What was a sturdy blanket of snow through the Vale and the Neck, no more than a foot-and-a-half deep in any one place, suddenly agonizingly slow, and he could ride no more than a couple hours during the daylight, having to leave time to stop and dig himself a place to camp. But now the horse was beginning to falter, and Sandor was having no more of this glacial pace.

"Bugger them all, I'm taking my bloody chances," he muttered to himself, pulling a hard left on Stranger's reins and giving him a good kick, urging them westward toward the Kingsroad. He tugged his cowl farther up on his face and hunched his shoulders low.

He had only been about half an hour east of the Kingsroad, sticking close just in case he needed to return to it. Stranger broke into a trot when the snow suddenly disappeared from under his hooves, trying to stomp off the snowballs that clung to the fur around his ankles. They began riding hard again for the north, the sky turning a sort of smoky purple-gray. _Find an inn tonight_, he thought. _You have to. For Stranger, at least._ It was another hour, and pitch-black before a pale column of smoke appeared on the road ahead. He spurred Stranger towards it eagerly. A good night's sleep would mean dreaming, he hoped, and ever since the Little Bird had flown chirping into his life, there had been something other than the coal brazier to dream about at night. In those dreams he was whole and unburned, a handsome, lordly knight like knew she deserved. She would tie her ribbons around his sword and plant a kiss on his cheek before he rode into some tourney or battle, winning it all for her. He had missed seeing her face, even if only in his dreams, every night the cold had kept him from sleeping well enough. _Winterfell is not so far anymore, though. You'll see your Little Bird yet. _There was no helping it—he broke into a wide grin.

The inn was decrepit and small, but seemed empty enough. _Only a desperate man would be travelling in this winter, _he thought. _What does that make me?_

A portly old crone—the innkeep, presumably—peeked out onto her porch to shout at him before hastily turning back inside.

"Stableboy's gone. You'll need t' see t' your horse yourself."

He dismounted in the yard and led Stranger quickly into the little stables, littered with heaps of old boards and other firewood. Not as warm as he would have liked, perhaps, but Stranger was a hardy beast and would be comfortable enough. He crossed back to the inn and showed himself through the creaking old door, noting the three-inch gap between the threshold and the bottom of the door and the awkward way it sat crooked on its hinges. _She must not have a man around,_ he mused, shutting the door behind him and sighing at the smoky warmth on his cheeks. _Looks to be a simple enough fix._

Sandor was the only patron within—and good thing too; the common room only looked to seat six. He took a chair with its back to the fire and settled himself down within it. His bad leg was aching abominably, but it was not enough to slow him. Losing the leg probably would not have been enough to slow him.

Before he could even ask, the woman brought him a flagon of hot mulled wine. "Bread's in t' oven. I'll have a bowl of brown out to you in a squick."

"Thank you, milady," he said in his best lowborn drawl. "_Gods_..." he muttered, relieved as he poured himself a cup and brought it to his lips. It was steaming-hot, and burning on his numb fingers and lips, a weak and sour vintage, but no wine had ever tasted sweeter. It was rejuvenating, yet only seemed to make him feel sleepy. The warmth spread throughout his face and chest, and feeling warm enough, Sandor figured there would be little harm in removing the hoods about his face.

The crone returned a minute later with a generous portion of creamy brown stew. "I don't suppose you'll be wantin' a room for t' evenin' as well?" And then she looked up at his face.

She had that _look_—he knew it well—the combination of disgust and horror, and some shred of sympathy and pity too, that look that had always made him so angry, so ashamed. The ghost of the Hound stirred within him, but he growled at himself to keep it silent.

In the past, he might have sniggered and asked if he seemed fearsome to her. He might have sarcastically begged pardon for his burns, or told her it was rude to stare. He did none of these things. She was the first person to look on his face other than the brothers on the Quiet Isle in more than three years, the first to look and find Sandor Clegane, and not the Hound, looking back.

She did not seem to appreciate the difference. She swallowed hard and put the bowl of stew down on the table before him, sitting down as she did, still staring. "Seven bless me," she began, "what happened to you, brother?"

_Has she never heard of me? Not even after thrice-damned Saltpans? Your old gods must be watching me, Little Bird._ He nearly smiled to himself.

"It happened a long time ago, milady, it don't trouble me any longer," he half-lied, returning to his cup of mulled wine and draining it.

"Of course, ah...then, are you requiring a room for this evenin'?"

Sandor nodded.

"There's one good warm one just back 'ere, behind the fire. I'll ready it for you once your bread's out."

_That was close, dog_, he thought to himself. _Too close. Keep your hood up or your scarf on next time._

He liked the idea of her kneeling in her little godswood, shivering bravely, praying to her gods for him to return to her. It was an impossible fantasy, true, but Sandor was feeling indulgent. _Do you know how much you need me? Have you figured it out yet?_ A pang of his old bitterness racked him. _You didn't know what you were losing when you lost me, Little Bird. I was the only armour you ever had..._

He gulped down the stew before him before the bread was even finished baking, tearing it apart too soon and burning his fingers, resigning to eat it separately. Between the food and the wine he was warm all over, and all the little aches and pains that the cold had numbed came back to him and rendered him almost immobile. He dragged himself to his room and collapsed on the bed, still dressed in his brother's robe and cloak, and filled his head with her.

The next morning when the sun woke him, his body was still in considerable pain, but it was an improvement from the night before. He felt warmed through, though, and that was a comfort he had been too long without. When he stepped into the common room to break his fast, a sharp blast of cold hit him and ripped through all of his layers to his bones. He shivered. _Is this all on account of that door?_

He looked up at the crone, shuffling around in all the furs she must have owned, exactly as she must have been the night before. _She must be freezing in here. And this winter is young yet_, he thought.

Breaking his fast on fried bread and bacon, he found himself shivering, his teeth chattering wildly. He looked over at the door again, and thought of the stray planks of wood out by the stables. _It would not take more than an hour for you to fix,_ he thought to himself, _you can spare an hour for this woman._

As if she had read his mind, the crone started to complain. "Sorry it's so cold in here, Brother, but ever since t'stableboy run off. I don't know 'ow to fix it meself."

"I could manage it, I think," he said modestly. Her face lit up with relief.

"Would you?! Oh, I would be so grateful, Brother!"

Sandor nodded, swallowing his last bite of bacon. "Warm up some of the bacon grease to put on the hinges. I'll fix the gap at the bottom and set it right." And he set out to the stable to fetch his tools.

An hour later the bottom was still scraping against the threshold a little, but it was otherwise swinging alright. The crone was vocal in her gratitude—at one point admitting she had first thought that he might have been the Hound, but "he weren't no kind of man to go fixin' an old woman's doorway..." She packed a bag for him of bread and cheese and wine and some salt pork to take with him and refused to take his payment. Sandor was thoroughly annoyed by the end of it all, but could not make himself feel as though the hour was poorly spent. As he saddled up on Stranger and rode out of the courtyard, a small chunk of burled wood caught his eye. It looked dry, dense, and dark—all its twists and knobs, it was bound to be pretty on the inside. Curious, he picked it up and tossed it into his bag before heading back onto the Kingsroad. It occurred to him that the Little Bird might be happy to hear about all this—how he fixed the crone's door and made her sure he was not that monstrous _Hound_ she had heard so many gruesome stories about. He imagined her little rose-coloured smile, on those pale pink cheeks of hers.

And she was not five days hard ride up this very road...It was almost enough to make him giddy. Almost.

In finding a miraculous little dry place to sleep, Sandor made camp that night, and after he hacked a chunk off of the frozen cheese and held it over the fire with his knife until it softened up and spread it over a torn piece of bread, he picked up the little knot of wood and looked it over carefully in the firelight. It was about the size of a loaf of bread, and vaguely square-shaped despite all its knobs and twists. He stared at it for a long time, wondering if he was just imagining the forms that started to emerge, but the longer he stared, the more apparent it became.

The little piece of wood resembled a hound—there was no doubt about it. It was a stately old beast, obscured within the black sappy twists in the burl, with one shoulder higher than the other, almost as if something was perched there, a bird perhaps.

A very little bird.

His eyes were wide as he stared at the thing, his vision coming alive in the twists of the wood. If only _that_ little piece were not there to obscure it...or _that_ one. Or _this_. He moved his knife into the wood, picking at the pieces that hid the figure from him, prodding and gouging and scraping and shaving until suddenly Sandor was carving. His lap was covered with little dark brown pieces of sticky wood when he put the thing down in his bag, still only crudely resembling a hound and his little bird, but it would get there. He had five nights yet.

_No longer a monstrous killing machine, Little Bird. Look at me. I make things now._

And he imagined a smile on those rose-coloured lips that was just for him.


	9. Sansa III

A/N: Let me just say sorry in advance. All of this had to happen. Do not fret.

**SANSA**

Sansa managed to get herself together before suppertime, though not without first donning the darkest dress she had left—her wedding gown, unfortunately—resolving to sew herself something black that very evening to wear on the morrow. So many years as a prisoner in varying castles cultivated within her a sort of unwavering determination and fastidious obsession with things she resolved to do, and, though she would speak not a word of it to anyone, she had resolved to give Sandor Clegane the mourning he deserved. Harrold had taken her hand the first moment he caught her outside her chambers, but after giving up on asking what had upset her so, he did not untangle his fingers from hers for the whole of the evening, save to pick up his fork during the meal. He followed her while she searched the castle for anything black she could cut up and re-sew—a heavy curtain that was not too poorly moth-eaten, it turned out to be—and kept his hand on her shoulder while she used his dagger to hack and slice at it, until she had something she could turn into a gown. Something like awe would cross his face from time to time as she stitched lightning-fast the seams into the dress, and though there was something that felt _wrong_ about it, she let him help her into it when it finally seemed to be finished.

"Sansa, that was...I had no idea you were such a seamstress, my love," Harrold said, baffled.

She glanced at her reflection in the looking-glass. It would do for now. On the morrow, perhaps, she could stitch little yellow dogs into the hem, if Harrold resigned his Queenwatching.

_Oh, Sandor..._

On the morrow she rose before the sun, like every morning, but dressed quickly in her new black gown and pulled some of the extra fabric over her hair, fixing it in place with pins before she draped her heavy cloak over her shoulders and went out to her godswood to pray for him.

Before the heart tree she knelt, the hot springs behind her warming the ground beneath her knees. She stared into the red eyes carved into the weirwood, thinking of all the times she had wanted eyes to stare into on the great oak tree in the red keep, let alone a tree to speak to at the Eyrie. _Gods of my father and his father before him,_ she began, _this morning I come to pray for the dead. My father and mother, and all of my brothers, may their souls know the stillness of Your peace. Watch over my sister, wherever she may be; in your realm or mine, keep her safe. My septa, though she was not of Your faith, and all my smallfolk who died at the hands of the Greyjoys and the Boltons, lead them from their suffering to a world of rest._

She was tearing up, but she would not let herself cry in this cold, as her tears would freeze to her cheeks.

_Gods of my fathers, keep watch on the soul of Sandor Clegane. He knew only hate and rage in his life—let him know love and peace in his death._ She wanted to ask more for him, but she knew not what to add. _Would that you could bring him here to me,_ she thought unbidden, _but Winterfell has enough ghosts to haunt it._

She sat there for some time, still with her Gods, watching the sun rise through the empty white branches reaching ever skyward. Something within them seemed to whisper _Sansa, Sansa..._

_Gods of my fathers, keep watch over _me_,_ she pleaded, _lead me to do what is right and good for my Kingdom, to rule by my honour as would make my father proud. Give me the strength to vanquish my enemies and come to the aid of my allies. Bless me with the love of your people, so I may lead them willingly and me with the grace to love the husband I have. Bless me, O Gods, with many sons, honourable and true, with strong minds and sound hearts. _

At that prayer her thoughts flitted back to her first morning waking again in Winterfell, when she had been sick, and rushed to tell her husband as much. She had thought then that his seed might have quickened within her—but had not been sick since, and recalled longer gaps in her moon's blood than she was currently in the midst of. Doubt had grown within her heart; it would not be the first time such things coincided to confuse her, and _Winter is coming_, some would say it was already here, and the Winter was no time to be having children. _Bless me with sons, O Gods, just please, not yet._

_Sansa_, the tree responded. It almost sounded like her brother Bran.

She heard the sound of footsteps crunching the snow behind her. She stood slowly, and turned to face the intruder.

Harrold.

"Forgive the disturbance, my Queen," he began, smiling. He was so charming, she knew; oh, how much easier her life would be, were she charmed!

"My lord," she curtsied, returning his smile.

"I told you not to call me that," he smirked, slipping an arm beneath her cloak around her waist and pulling her up to his lips for an on-mouth kiss. He had been sparing with them, she noted, since their wedding-night, waiting for her, she figured, to look like she wanted them. _He is such a good husband, and deserves a good wife,_ she thought, feeling his breath ghost over her nose; she tried to be one she moved her mouth against his shyly, trying to focus on the nice things about the sensation—his soft skin, his sweet smell—and not the things he lacked, like scarring or sweat or blood or a dagger. This seemed to encourage him, and he slipped his other hand under her scarf and into her hair, clutching her to him fiercely and kissing her with every ounce of persuasive affection he had in him. She was almost willing to think the kiss moved her, until something within her roared—the part of her that would _always _be Sansa Stark, whether she had to pretend to be Alayne Stone or Sansa Lannister or Sansa Hardyng, the part that nearly shoved Joffrey off the edge of the Red Keep when he made her look upon her Father's head on the castle walls, the part that had kept her together for so long—it could tell when she was lying to herself, and simply would not allow it.

"Mmm," Harrold sighed into her hair after they ended the kiss, looking on her happily in a way that nearly made her cringe in pain. He believed her charade, her doting husband, cradling her head against his shoulder. "Were you sick this morning? I did not hear you wake."

"Not this morning." A sad sort of quiet came over them.

"Are you feeling any better than yesterday, Sansa?"

She sighed against him. He was warm, at least. "I am, Harry, thank you."

"I was worried about you."

"I know."

He pulled back to look at her, eyeing her carefully. "Will you not tell me what it was that hurt you so, Sansa? If there is anything I can do, say the word, and it is done—"

"Thank you Harry, really, I mean it. But there are some things a woman has to face on her own." She gave him an apologetic half-smile.

"You do _not_ have to go through these things alone anymore, my love. The pain you have known in your life—" he cupped her face, "_look at me_. The pain you have known in your life is pain no person should ever have to face. And you, my beautiful Sansa, you have faced it all with the poise and grace of the true Queen you are...But remember this. You do not have to be a Queen here, in my arms, alright? In my arms, let me guard you. You need not guard yourself." He kissed her, softly again, and she realised she was crying, but his closeness had kept the tears liquid on her cheeks. And then she was sobbing, and flung her arms around his neck, burying her face in his chest and wailing if only because he was _there_ for her. His arms tightened about her waist and lifted her up off the ground, and then she was cradled against his shoulder, still sobbing gently, as he carried her inside.

Back in their chambers Sansa put herself to rights, letting him pet and kiss her hair while she stopped herself from sobbing and let the redness go down in her eyes. He seemed to take great pride in his comforting her, and there really was something very intimate about it all, in that way that comforting and being comforted is always intimate.

When she broke her fast it was almost mid-day, and, to her surprise, her Hand informed her that a crowd had gathered in the great hall "To lay their eyes on their Queen, Your Grace."

Sansa was baffled. "But I am not coronated for another fortnight!"

"You have been their Queen since your brother Robb died at the Twins, Your Grace. They have been missing you for some time."

The weight of that hit her like a stone in her stomach, blooming into something warm and wonderful within her. _They have been missing you..._

"Well," she said, looking down at her modest black dress made from curtains, thinking momentarily of changing into something more befitting a Queen, and deciding against it. "We will require my iron circlet, then."

"Will you not change your gown, Your Grace?"

"I should think not, uncle. These smallfolk who gather to see me, like as not their finest garments are made from curtains too, if not something cruder. Why should I go on pretending as though my finest dress is not made from the same stuff as theirs?" _My finest dress, for you—would you laugh at me, Sandor?_ "I am no Cersei Lannister; I will rule by love, not fear."

"And how could they not love a Queen as humble as you, Your Grace?" Her husband asked, sliding a hand over her tummy as he kissed her temple.

"Indeed. How could they not?" Had she not known better, she would have said her great-uncle was beaming.

That afternoon, the Queen in the North held her court for the first time.

"All kneel before Her Grace Sansa of houses Stark and Hardyng, first of her name, Queen in the North of the Andals and the First Men." And she slipped into the room on her cue, silent on her feet, and felt her heart swell to bursting as her father's great hall, all filled with the smallfolk of her Northern kingdom, knelt and bowed their heads to her.

"_THE QUEEN IN THE NORTH!" _ someone enthusiastic shouted, effectively starting a chant, and Sansa stood there for a moment, letting their words wash over her while she waited for the moment to become real. It did not. It was all part of a perfect and terrible dream, and from which there was no waking.

Her smallfolk brought no grievances before her, only their affections. The more affluent brought gifts from their crafts—soft white wool and scented tallow candles and pretty little pots with dried summer flowers. She received them all graciously. She held little newborn children and smoothed their soft, downy hair over their heads, thinking all the while of her own children she would hold someday. _But not until Spring comes again, Gods, please..._

Eventually they seemed satisfied enough for her to adjourn, and Sansa floated back to her chambers on a bed of new-sown confidence. Her elation could not last, though, for a soldier with a flaming heart sewn on his breast approached her, and bowing, said "Your Grace. A lady Jeyne Poole begs your audience."

Sansa's heart leapt into her throat. _Gods! Jeyne!_

"I will see her at once!"

But she was not the Jeyne Pool Sansa had known as a girl.

This girl was frail, pallid, shivering by the fire. Her hair was wild and her eyes were wilder. It looked as though she never slept, nor moved from her spot by the hearth. Sansa knelt beside her, taking her bony hand in both of her own and kissing her white little knuckles tenderly. This gave the girl a start, yanking her from whatever hell she had occupied and pulling her into reality.

"Sansa! My—Your Grace..." she said sheepishly, keeping her head down.

"Sansa is good, Jeyne, my good Jeyne," she reached out to stroke her hair, but the girl flinched away from her. "What is the meaning of this? What has become of you, my love?"

Jeyne shuddered. "I m-meant to tell it true, Your Gr-gra..."

"Sansa," she insisted.

"S-s-sansa. I mean to t-t-tell you what m-m-my l-lord h-h-_husband_..." she was trying so hard. It broke Sansa's heart. She reached out to stroke her hair again, and this time, Jeyne did not flinch away. "What R-ramsay did to me..." she looked to be crying, though silently.

"Ramsay Snow?"

"_Bolton! _Gods, Sansa, you have to remember _his name! _Please, for your sake, do _not_ remind him he is a bastard, my lady. He gets so frightfully _cross_ when I do that..."

"He _got_ cross, darling, he is not around to be cross with you any longer."

But Jeyne was shaking her head. "Yes he is!" she sobbed, throwing her head down between her knees. "He never left! Theon took me away from him but he never _left _me! He will always be here!" and she was rapping her head violently with her tiny, emaciated fist, to show where _here _was.

_Gods. She's gone mad._

"My name was _Arya_. I was good to him, I was! But...he was never satisfied. _It was never enough!"_

"Oh, Jeyne, my Jeyne...What did he do to you that broke you so, my love?" But Jeyne was shaking her head.

"No. No. It is too terrible. I cannot speak of it to a Queen."

"Speak to your oldest friend."

"Not even her."

"Jeyne. I command it."

Jeyne Poole looked up at her with wild brown doe-eyes, and any colour she had left in her skin fell from her face at once. "If it please Your Grace..." she said in the smallest voice Sansa had ever heard.

She proceeded to recite unspeakable events. A litany of them, in a cold, quiet voice, as though she spoke a recitation. She told the Queen about what Ramsay did to _Arya_, what _Arya _would have to do to please him, what would happen if _Arya _did not, and what would happen if she did anyway...

Ramsay Snow made Prince Joffrey look like Aemon the Dragonknight. The terror Sansa withstood at King's Landing would have been as pleasant as a summer picnic compared to what Jeyne withstood. _What _Arya _withstood. She cannot be Jeyne and live with these horrors._

Sansa knew a little something about that.

"Listen to me, Jeyne," she said, crouching and gathering her old friend's hands into her own, holding them close to her face. "I swear to you, by the Old Gods and the new, that I will have his head for what he has done to you." Jeyne began to sob again as Sansa kissed her hands, and then her cheeks, and then her hair, before she removed herself from the weeping girl's presence, to rage and weep herself.

_That could have been me,_ she shuddered to think, biting down on her lips and trying not to cry again, though she was overcome with empathy and a queer sort of relief. _That could have been me, but it was not. I have been stronger, _she thought guiltily, _I have to stay strong. For my child. For my family. For my Kingdom..._

She grit her teeth and thought of Ramsay Snow, and let her anger take her.

_Heads will roll...And Gods damn me for cowardice if I cannot take them myself._

Late after supper, as Harrold was occupied with something else, Sansa found herself alone in her chambers, looking out of her window onto the blue-black sheen on the snow in the night-time and thinking over the turbulence of her day. _And what a day it has been..._ Jeyne, court, and her morning vigil in the godswood, and Harrold—_Harry_—and all his sweet words, and kisses, and smiles. Absently she fingered a stray thread in her dress, remembering suddenly her intention to sew little yellow dogs around its hem, and sighed. _Oh, Sandor..._

Sansa bowed her head and said another prayer for his soul, trying not to curse the Gods for taking him from her as well. She realized sadly that she could not give him a proper mourning—she had not even laid eyes on him in four years time, and her attentions were demanded so many different elsewheres. Though she went to the trouble of fetching herself a scrap of yellow thread and pushing it through the eye of a sewing needle, she could not bring herself to plunge it into the hem of her dress and make the first stitch. _As deeply as you feel his loss now, you will not mourn Sandor Clegane forever. He kept you safe while you were both in Kings Landing, showed you his own sort of kindness, perhaps... but he left you too. And now, he is dead. Mourn his loss, Sansa, and mourn him well. But when you are finished, close that chapter of your life, and move on._

Within her, Sansa Stark railed and raged. Sansa Stark would always mourn him. _Always._

But it was Sansa Hardyng who was Queen in the North, was it not?


	10. Sandor IV

A/N: I regret to inform y'all that I have LOADS of work/meetings this week, seeing as the term is wrapping up, and I won't be able to keep up with the update schedule you guys are used to. But! As meme Ned Stark is so quick to remind us on Tumblr, Christmas is coming, and with it, Christmas break. Then, my sweetlings, you will have your daily updates back. Until then, I will work whenever (and as fast as) I can.

**SANDOR**

Waiting for her was making him wild.

He had ridden Stranger hard—harder than he should have, most likely, but the horse seemed to understand his urgency. Ever-northward they sped, racing through snow and wind and darkness, racing into the very heart of Winter itself, racing to the Winter Town.

_There! Could it be?_ Sandor had ridden over the western fork of the White Knife not an hour before—could this cluster of simple buildings, humble log cabins and plain stone houses, really be the Winter Town? _There certainly seems to be enough bloody people to make it likely..._There were horses, carts, and banners everywhere, he saw, riding into the market square.

_Is there a tournament?_ A rush of adrenaline hit his veins. He was hardly prepared for one... _but I would fight as hard as I could for you, Little Bird, and crown you Queen of Love and Beauty, just to see the smile on your face._

As much as he wanted to ride straight to the gates of Winterfell, cutting down anyone who stood in his way to her, to kneel and lay his sword at her feet, he knew that would be madness. Instead, he would gather what information he could about her—whether she held court from time to time, if she was going to be making any appearances, and why all these bloody people were packed into the Winter Town. He sought an inn.

One particular establishment, a certain _Smoking Log_, looked to have an empty stall in their stables, despite all the horses and lordly sorts about. He handed the stableboy the reins and warned him about the biting, and went inside for some wine, and to see about a room for the night. _For a few nights, most like. Or the rest of my life._ His heart leapt at the sight of white direwolf banners, crude but unmistakable, hanging by the door to the kitchens. He shrugged his cowl higher across his face, approached the innkeep, and learned that there was, in fact, a room to rent, but not a tourney on the morrow.

"Wonderin' at the commotion, are y'?" the innkeep, an old man with an enviable white beard, had asked him. Sandor nodded, trying to keep from speaking as much as he could. "They're here for the executions. Lord Bolton an' his bastard son are hav'n their heads off at high-noon, thanks to the Gods!"

Murmurs of "aye" and "I'll drink to that" rose in the common room. Someone said "Gods save the Queen," and it seemed to catch on, "Aye! Gods save the Queen in the North!"

_Little Bird is like as not to be at the executions,_ he thought. _I mislike the idea of her watching any more beheadings, though...after her father..._he decided he would go, though, just in case she was present for the killing.

"I've not heard much of this Queen yet, milords," Sandor lied, speaking to some sot who would hopefully not remember him in half an hour, much less the next day. He was all too enthusiastic to explain that Lady Sansa, Lord Eddard's eldest daughter—he had two, did he not? Four children, two of them daughters?—and Lady Sansa was the one who had _not_ married the bastard of Bolton; that much was clear—anyway, Lady Sansa had come back from the Vale with a load of Knights-of-the-Vale declaring her Queen in the North. This week, all her Lords Bannermen had gathered to swear her fealty at her coronation—that was yesterday, he said, and Sandor's heart sunk. It was ridiculous, he knew, but he was upset to have missed her coronation—seeing all the lords of the North and the Vale on their knees, swearing their swords to her, a delicate little jewelled crown on his Little Bird's delicate little brow, would have been the prettiest scene he had ever witnessed. He imagined it in full later that night, as he stared at the ceiling, vainly trying to sleep; a chorus of voices singing her name, the chime of steel on leather and stone, and she would look over them with those big, beautiful blue eyes of hers that just seemed to _know_...and he would have stayed standing just a moment longer, long enough to attract her attention, before revealing to her his face and kneeling, his sword at his feet. And then she would have swept off her dais, rushed into his arms, kissed him fully, the way he wished he had kissed her after the Blackwater, and named him to her Queensguard that very moment.

"Now who's the one with the head full of songs, dog?" He slurred to himself, an angry shame coming over him as he became aware of his dreaming. He flopped over on his bed and groaned. He hardly knew what to do with himself, now that the little figurine he had carved for her was finished. The hound he had carved had been the sort his father had kept at Casterly Rock—black, painted with shoe polish, with pointy ears and a long, thin snout. The dog was lying down with its head between its paws, its fluffy black tail up and wagging behind it, and the little bird perched and peeping on its head. He tried to make it look like the dog was smiling, or at least looking up at the little bird, but he could not seem to tell anymore. He told himself she would see it in the figure, that it would warm her heart and that she would fall in love with it, and praise him so when he presented it to her, but part of him was cynical and filled him with doubt. Would she send him away when she saw it? Would she think it crude or useless or trifling? Would she feign admiration of it to him out of her _courtesy_? He could not know.

He could only trust her.

Sandor woke the next morning and followed the crowd in the streets to the ruined gates of Winterfell, gritting his teeth to keep from throwing people aside and barrelling toward the castle, toward her. The crowd amassed on the south moor, frozen and covered with a blanket of snow that almost rose to Sandor's knee, gathered around a little clearing in the snow, where the headsman's block was paced. _Not much space in there...Where's the dais? _He saw no chair set out for her to sit in—maybe they made quicker work of executions in the North._ Or maybe she will keep herself away from this ugliness after all. _ His heart sank at the thought.

But then there were trumpets and drums, and all heads including his own snapped towards the castle. A procession snaked out the ruined portcullis, led by two men holding bright white banners—on one emblazoned a direwolf, the other mapped in red diamond checks.

Following behind the banners were the high houses of the north—Mormonts and Glovers, Umbers and Manderlys , Hornwoods, Flints, Dustins, Cerwyns, Ryswells, Reeds, Tallharts. And then he caught sight of a flash of coppery-red on a stone-gray dress, and his heart leapt into his mouth. _Bugger you Tallharts. Let me see her!_

"All hail Her Grace Sansa, of houses Stark and Hardyng—"_Hardyng? But her mother was a Tull—_but then her face came into view and his thoughts stopped dead. "—Lady of Winterfell and Queen in the North."

The world around him went to a knee in reverence. He fell to his for another reason.

She was even more lovely than he ever imagined she could be. Than any woman had a right to be. She looked taller than he remembered—and more majestic too, her poise erect and elegant, an unafraid, dutiful expression layered in her features. Her flesh was just pinker than the snow, her lips and cheeks aflush, and her steps were measured so she seemed to float closer and closer and closer to him. He wanted to call out to her, to bowl aside all these people and rush forth, scooping her up to hold her against his chest and promise her no harm would ever think to come to her again.

She was coming closer.

An iron circlet was wrapped about her brow, more plain and humble than she deserved, making her all the more lovely in contrast. It dipped down into a little point between her eyebrows, drawing due attention to her wide blue eyes that had in them a controlled, focused serenity that he could only call maturity. He thought of the things those eyes had seen—horrors, all—that he could have kept from her if he had not been too bloody _afraid _to steal her that night. Wildling men stole all their women to make them fall in love, and this little bird had more of the wild in her than she let on. He had seen it, once—a tiny fraction of a second, something terrible in her eyes: a hatred and rage and bitterness, the same that he knew so well. It had been her moment of reckoning, out on that ledge by her Father's impaled head, and she had so nearly succumbed to it, let its wrath make a ruin of her purity. The cut on her lip was welling blood and he had drawn his handkerchief to hand to her, but then he saw that monstrous look in her eyes and he knew _exactly _what she was feeling, and he had to shake her from its grasp before it took her over the ledge with it.

He seized her. "Here, girl," he murmured, dabbing at her lip with all the tenderness he could muster. _I am _here,_ girl. I know that look—I wear it myself— and it does not become a lady like you. _

The blond whelp of a man that had been clutching her arm relented, leaving the Little Bird standing behind the headsman's block, her hands folded across her body primly, beside a great _knight_ with a lined, stern face and salt-and-pepper hair, a leaping black trout on his breastplate. _The Blackfish._ Sandor noticed a little iron clasp in the shape of a hand fastening his cloak—_Little Bird must have named her great-uncle her Hand..._ As he scanned the faces of the lords and knights about her, he shrugged to himself and decided the Blackfish seemed worthiest of the honour out of those in attendance. He stole another glance at her face. He wanted to sigh. His chest felt like it might burst. She was so _close..._

_...Little Bird..._

But she was not so little anymore, he could see that now. She was taller still than she had been—nearly of a height with her great-uncle—and her figure, well...Sandor's throat went dry. The dress was modest but fit her well, and told him that her waist was smaller than he remembered, but her hips and bust a little fuller. Her height must have come from growth in her legs, he mused, judging the length of her skirts, and though a heavy white fur cloak hung from her shoulders, he could tell they were still the fine-boned narrow shoulders he had always wanted to rest his paw on while he walked her hither and thither across the Red Keep. He watched her grit her teeth; the traitor lord was brought before her.

_I hope she is not too embarrassed to look away,_ he thought, _she has no need to see such ugliness._

Roose Bolton was pushed to his knees before her. He was ragged to look upon—dressed in bloodstained rags, his hair a tangled mess, his beard coming out in patches and his colourless eyes bruised with fatigue. His expression, though, was heavy as stone. Sansa looked down at him, unfiltered loathing in her eyes.

_Where is her headsman?_

After a long moment of staring at the traitor at her feet, she looked up at the lords and common folk around her, her focus flitting from spot to spot, never resting, never looking at him, though she came agonizingly close. She glanced back down at him again, and raised her hand to hush the murmuring crowd.

Silence swept over them at once.

"Lord Roose Bolton," she began slowly. It was the most musical phrase Sandor had ever heard. "You stand accused of High Treason: conspiracy to massacre the Lords of the North at Edmure Tully's wedding to Rosalin Frey, and Kingslaying," she hissed the word, drawing it out slowly with anger. _When did Little Bird become so fierce?_ "As you drove your blade through my brother Robb's heart, the heart of _your King._" She let the word hang over him, and the crowd, and Sandor thought his heart was going to stop. "How do you plead, my Lord?" She asked, her eyes staring down at him unfocused, as if into nothing, and her voice became very small.

"Guilty, Your Grace," Roose Bolton all but whispered. Sansa closed her eyes and seemed to relax for a moment, before opening them and looking to her hand, who drew his sword...

_Does she not have a proper headsman? I could do it for her. It would be below me but I—_

...and handed the shining blade to her. She settled the point between her feet, grasped the hilt just below her breast, and bowed her head.

His blood ran cold.

She spoke then, quietly and reverently, as though it were a prayer.

"I, Sansa, of houses Stark and Hardyng, Lady of Winterfell and Queen in the North of the Andals and the First Men..." All Sandor could do was blink. "do sentence you, Roose of house Bolton, to die."And then...and then...

Little Bird picked up her great-uncle's sword, her arms shaking under its weight as she held it high over her head with both of her arms for a moment, something like trepidation fleeting across her face before determination, and then she bit her lip and pulled the sword down from the air with all her might, landing it with a sickening squelch and crunch in the middle of the traitor's neck. A wash of blood sprayed up and hit her skirt and her cloak, a sickening tide of red—Sandor had never been so disgusted by the sight of blood as he was in this moment—and she ripped the sword free, another spray of blood coming off the sword and hitting the snow before her, as she brought it up and swung it down again, the head coming free and rolling at her feet. The sword landed in the earth and she stared at it there for a moment, slowly drawing it and herself up from her hunched wielding posture, unable to tear her gaze from the puddle of blood congealing at her feet. Her face looked pale and her eyes wide, staring, staring. He watched, transfixed, as she swallowed carefully, still mesmerized by the acephalous body before her, passed the sword to her great-uncle, took a gasping breath to centre herself, and looked up at the crowd before her, her breast falling beneath a shuddering sigh.

"_THE QUEEN IN THE NORTH!" _someone shouted into the silence and it caught like wildfire—the whole crowd, and the high lords too, were cheering for her. Sandor was speechless. Sandor was paralyzed.

The most perfect, innocent, pure thing the world had ever shown him had just beheaded a man. Before his very eyes. And he had not been able to stop her.

He could not remember a nightmare so terrible.

Sandor ended up back in the inn with a wineskin in his belly and another one in his hand. He had not been this drunk since before the Hound had died, and he knew it was no way to deal with things that troubled him properly, but he was in no mood to 'deal' with what he had just witnessed.

So Little Bird had grown up some. He could stretch his mind to allow for that. Made her claim as Queen in the North so somebody—the Blackfish, presumably, though he would have initially guessed Littlefinger to be behind it all..._slimy little bugger_—could rule through her. Fine, fine; she had always been Cersei's pawn while he knew her. He could not imagine much had changed in four years time. But _what _in _Seven bloody buggering hells_ would have possessed her to swing that sword _herself? Oh, Little Bird, my Little Bird, what is become of you?_ He dumped the rest of the wine down his throat and ordered another.

"Sorry, ser, but winter rations are two skins a man, a night," the innkeep stated flatly. Sandor glared at him, quiet and still, until the innkeep looked back up at him and repeated. "'at's the rations, ser."

"I'm no buggering _Ser_!" Sandor spat, pounding his table as he turned and removed himself from the common room hastily, brooding and muttering curses to himself.

Two wineskins was not enough. Ten wineskins would not have been enough. The Little Bird, _his_ Little Bird, had found the man who had plotted the end of her brother, the man who should have by rights been her greatest threat and fear, and cleaved his neck in half _herself. _She had borrowed a sword to do it, but it had not been his. She had fallen back into the arms of her most trusted advisor, but those arms had not been his. Little Bird needed no protector, no _headsman, _no bloody vicious dog. She had gone on and won the North. Herself. Without him.

A hundred wineskins would not have been enough.

He stared at the wall a long time unblinking, clenching and unclenching his fists, grinding his teeth. He needed a quill. He needed ink. He needed bloody _quiet._

_If you had known she had no need of you, would you have come anyway?_ He asked himself in the voice of the Elder Brother.

He furrowed his brow and buried his face in his hands. He knew the answer. To admit it was to give up another portion of what dignity he was left, but he knew.

_I'd have limped the whole way unarmed and unarmored if it'd get me there, just to lay down and die at her feet, _he had told him. Sandor knew it was the truth. _I'll die before I lose her again._ He hated it. He wanted her to need him; wanted her to rush to him, praising the gods that he had come back to save her, but he let himself wade in song no longer. Sandor opened his eyes. She had gone on and won the North. Herself. Without him. And he would have to be content following behind her like the lost dog he was.

He glanced over at the figurine, watching how it cast shadows in the firelight, trying to read the expression he had carved into the eyes of the hound. They were pathetic, adoring, worshipping...too true. He wanted to scowl at the thing and pitch it across the room but he fought with that urge, bringing the thing to his lips and pressing them to the top of the little bird's head instead. On the morrow, he would go to her court and give it to her. He had no choice. His will had no power against the likes of her.

"See you in the morning, Little Bird."

Seeing as he had relinquished his sword at the castle gates and was now surrounded by the Knights of the Vale, Sandor decided it would be wise to wait until the Queen was finished with all the other court-goers to see her that evening. It almost hurt him, to sit outside waiting in the freezing cold antechamber, but every now and again he would catch a snatch of her voice—a stray phrase or word, or just the music and melody of it—and he would be contented anew for a few minutes or so.

Sandor fidgeted with the figurine often, tossing it from hand to hand or picking it up and examining it. There were still bits that had to go, but he knew if he started carving it again he would whittle it down to nothing. So he left it with its imperfections. Gods knew he had his.

One particular guard was making him nervous, the arms of some lower house of the Vale on his surcoat, until the guard deigned to speak to him, admiring the thing in his hands. The guard asked him if he had carved it himself.

"Aye, ser. Ne'er seen a direwolf afore though, so I modelled the beast after one o' milords hounds," Sandor drawled.

"It is fine work, I do say."

"Thank ye', ser."

"Are you familiar with other skills of carpentry?"

Sandor nodded. "Aye, ser."

The guard grinned. "I have heard her grace mention need of a carpenter. Perhaps you would lend her your skills?"

"Her wish is my command," he said. _Isn't that the truth of it?_

An hour later, he was the only one still waiting in the antechamber. The burned wooden door was dragged open for the last, agonizing time.

He tugged his hood lower over his face and stood, his bad leg cramping, and walked in.

Perhaps it had been the hours waiting out in the freezing cold, or coming to terms with his unconditional need for her the night before, but she seemed even more radiant, sitting in a pool of flickering firelight that made the red in her hair dance. Her iron diadem sat atop it, static in the play of the light. He tried not to hurry forward, tried not to startle her, but he was so anxious for the moment to come. Finally, he reached a distance close enough to be _close_ but far enough to be respectable. "My Queen," he rasped, taking a knee.

"Remove your hood, Ser," some pompous knight spat at him. His stomach twisted, nervous. But then she spoke, a flute on the air.

"Please, ser. I would look on the face of my loyal Northmen."

Sandor took a breath. "No Northman, Your Grace," and he reached up with his free hand, pulling back the hood of his cowl but keeping his head down. "And no 'Ser' neither."

He heard the scrape of scores of blades coming free from their scabbards. Someone cried "it's the Hound!" But it was the little gasp that escaped her lips that made him look up, meeting her eyes. There was something there. Confusion? Disbelief? Fear? _Do I still frighten her so much?_ His heart sank deep—it had never sunk so low.

"_Seize him!"_


	11. Sansa IV

**SANSA**

Harry woke several times in the night shivering. Once, he had sleepily commanded her to close the window and come back to bed. Once, he had stood and shuffled over to her, wrapping his arms around her waist and kissing her shoulder, begging and pleading with her to get some sleep. He had even tried to pick her up and carry her. But Sansa could not. She stood on her balcony all night, wrapped in the gray and white furs of her house, numb not from the cold, but from something colder.

She had meant to get some sleep, but she could not seem to remove her eyes from the black night sky. The great houses of the North—or whatever was left of them—were to arrive on the morrow. They would feast and treat all day, and presuming all went well, the Lords in the North would declare her as their Queen, and she would be coronated before the sun set on the second day. These were brave men, and true, but each house had suffered great losses in her brother's war, and she knew not how that would affect their opinions on resuming their rebellion. _I am not asking them to fight_, she insisted to herself. _Yet, _a voice retorted warily. Sansa sighed. There was nothing she could think to calm herself.

Only perpetuating her stress was the continued absence of the Knights she had sent to the Dreadfort; she had received no word on their progress, the state of the castle or the success of the ongoing siege. Sansa was near sick with worry. And her moonblood was still absent.

_Gods, please, I am afraid enough for this coming Winter. Do not give me a child in the midst of it. Please._

She watched as the sky darkened finally, the stars blazing brighter than they should, before a warmth like light began to creep across the eastern corner of the sky. The sun was coming, and with it, the day. She watched it rise with impatient dread, until the red priestess' chants broke her silence and Sansa turned from the window customarily and called for her bath.

The Manderlys were the first to arrive, blue-green banners with mermen stitched in white already waiting for her when she came down to break her fast. Before she could draw breath to welcome, their whole party (there must have been fifty of them, between members of the house and the retainers they brought with them) had drawn their swords and bent their knees. "No matter how this turns out on the morrow, you will always have my fierce support, Your Grace," Wyman Manderly had said, his great walrus moustache exaggerating his smile and the twinkle in his eye before he sat down to join her at her morning meal. Sansa had wanted to cry with relief, but was thankful she did not.

What was left of House Reed arrived next, emerging from the Wolfswood silently and unobtrusively, hardly breaking the snow beneath their feet as they made their way across to the castle. Jonelle Cerwyn and her retainers were on their heels, splendid in white with their gray battle axes. Ryswells and Dustins arrived in tandem, a large party accompanying them. Though Sansa knew very few of her guests by look, she recognized all the crests and sigils from her days as a girl, when her father would treat each of them to a feast in turn, and seat the head of their house at the place of honour beside him. It was a queer sort of comfort to see them all, haggard and travel-weary, many unlikely representatives standing as the last of their line. Sansa could sympathize. She was the same, after all.

Houses were still arriving as late as sunset, the Umbers of the Last Hearth the final house to sweep into the hall. Sansa's heart fell when she saw the Greatjon walking in, leaning on a great thick cane made from twisted wood, his hair much thinner and whiter than she ever remembered, but even still, he seemed neither small nor weak. His face lit up when he saw her—the Umbers had been frequent guests at her father's feasts during her youth, and Sansa had memories of the Greatjon tossing her up into the air to her squealing delight before she was old enough to be concerned with propriety. His retainers helped him to his knees before her.

"Your Grace," he said gently as Sansa hurried over to him, placing a hand on his cheek.

"Rise, my Lord, it pains me to watch you struggle so."

"It is nothing, Your Grace. You must pardon my tardiness. I wanted to be the first here for you, like I was the first for your brother, but the snows were more than ten foot deep around the Last Hearth."

"Do not trouble yourself with that. Come. Warm yourself. Drink," Sansa smiled, escorting him to a high place in the modest feast.

King Stannis and Melisandre were present as well, though the red priestess seemed to be enjoying herself more than the Southron King, whom she had placed in the seat of honour. Sansa looked around, frowning. There only seemed to be enough room at the tables for the highest lords and ladies of the North and the Vale—Knights, retainers, and lesser members of the present houses had to make themselves comfortable on the floor of the hall, as most of the tables that had once filled the hall had been lost sometime during Winterfell's varying sacks. Sansa had been frantic, searching the castle high and low _herself_ for any piece of furniture that could have lent itself to being a table for the purpose of this gathering. Referring to the list she had made some weeks before, she was loath to realize they were in desperate need of almost everything—beds, tables, chairs, dressers all..._What I need is a castle carpenter. Or four._

The feast was well in full swing when the doors to the great hall burst open again.

The Lords escorted through the doors then needed no trumpets, no announcement, no introduction. They carried no banners, and their retainers were just that. They were worse-looking than most, their clothes rumpled and stained, bound hand and feet with iron shackles and dragged in by four score of the finest Knights of the Vale. Sansa prickled and stood, rage and anxiety coursing through her in violent waves as she stepped down off the dais to meet them in the middle of the hall before the feast, those eating on the floor shuffling to make way for her. Lord Roose Bolton and his bastard, now a Snow again since the North had ceded from the Iron Throne once more, were dropped unceremoniously at her feet. The father was silent, but the son was spitting and cursing, shouting particular obscenities and threats at the Queen. But it was his father who held her interest.

Lord Roose would not remove his gaze from the stones beneath her feet. "Look at me," she commanded of him, and though he tilted his face farther up to look at her skirts, he would not comply. His ugly bastard was still screaming. "Take that one outside. I will deal with him in a moment," she said dismissively, kneeling and taking the chin of the broken lord before her and tilting his face up with all the strength she could muster. His eyes were the colour of dirty snow, the lightest brown-gray she had ever seen. She had never known him well, and if she told it true she would have to admit that he terrified her. But that was Sansa Stark's truth, and she was Sansa Hardyng, Queen in the North.

"All I want to know is why, my lord," she whispered, staring intently into his face. The whole feast had hushed to watch her, and in the silence she heard her voice echoing off the walls. He tried to lower his eyes but she jerked his face up again. "You will look at me when you speak to your Queen. I command it."

"Yes, Your Grace," he said, so softly, so meekly, she could hardly believe that he was the one who had driven his blade through her brother's heart. But hundreds of people had seen it, attested to its truth, Northerners and southerners alike. He swallowed, apparently ignoring her question. Her rage lapped at her patience.

"I asked you _why_. Answer me," she snarled.

He was silent only a moment more. "I had more to gain by turning my cloak, Your Grace—"

"That was not my question. Why was it _you_ who plunged the blade into my brother's heart?" She felt hot tears creeping up behind her eyes but she would not let them down. She gripped his chin so fiercely she thought she might break it, or break her own fingers trying.

He would only look at her, resigned and unblinking. She released his chin and stood, beating her hand against her skirt. "Put Lord Bolton in our warmest dungeon. See to it that he has furs to sleep beneath. I will not have him freezing to death before his _trial_." She waved him away.

The feastgoers murmured various lines of support, gruesome suggestions for the traitor Lord and his bastard. She felt the need to address her guests and turned to face them, gathering a breath deep within her. "Northmen," she began, her legs shaking despite herself, "our seasons of oppression are ended. King Stannis has yielded to me and the Lions on the Iron Throne pick their teeth with the bones of their own dead. Targaryen pretenders make false claims of rights and dragons, but they have _neither_, and we are our own Kingdom again.

"It has not been easy for us, these seasons of war, and though it oft seemed like we had lost all," her eyes found Jonelle Cerwyn, Greatjon Umber, Alysane Mormont and Gawen Glover ; "now here we stand, triumphant. We can all count the dead among our families—I know I do, and I pray for them in the godswood every day—let it be known that they have not died in vain. Let it be known that they all died in the glory of battle for country, and honour, and hope.

"The swords and banners may yet be stowed, but we have battles still to fight—for though there are snows on the ground, Winter is still coming—and we must, as the North, we _must _come together in this time of darkness and hardship to hold one another upright."

"THE QUEEN IN THE NORTH!" It was the Greatjon's booming voice, "THE QUEEN IN THE NORTH!" The rest of the room joined him, and some rose, drawing their swords and laying them down. Soon the whole room followed suit, and Sansa stood and watched them, breathing heavily, a small, triumphant smile spreading out from her lips.

"My Lord Hand," she beckoned, and Ser Brynden came to her side, taking her hand. "I intend to make quick work of that Ramsay Snow. My lords are welcome to remain in the warmth while I take care of such gruesome business," dread was already congealing in the pit of her stomach as she looked forward to such 'business'. Her lords would have naught of it, though.

"Not after what the bastard did to Lady Hornwood! Oh, no, I will look upon him as he sees justice!" Lord Wyman cried, struggling to hoist himself from his chair and waddle out after her. A great number of lords high and low alike stood to follow her outside. Sansa willed her face not to betray her fear. This would not be pleasant for her, but she _had _to. She was her Father's trueborn daughter, a Stark of Winterfell, _and our way is the old way_.

Her great-uncle caught her eyes for a moment, his look weighted with understanding, and he gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. Many times had he offered to do this for her, but Sansa had insisted. Her lords had just declared her Queen in the North _again_; she was not about to prove them wrong.

They gathered in the courtyard. A couple of squires from the vale brushed the snow off of some fallen stone and dragged it to her feet. The bastard was still spewing obscenity like Sansa had never heard as he was dragged before her, her pulse steadily climbing, her brow breaking out into cold sweat. "I, Sansa of Houses Stark and Hardyng, first of my name," she shouted over the bastard's shrieking, "Queen in the North of the Andals and the First Men, do accuse you of innumerable counts of rape, treachery and cruelty, and thereby do sentence you to die." A knight forced his head down on the block at her feet and she thought her heart might give out, it was thumping so. Her great-uncle's longsword found its way into her hands, and she tried to focus on the lessons he had given her. _Grip it with both hands...yes, Your Grace, just like that...hold it up—careful now!—pick a spot on the earth. Bring it down. Harder. Again. Again._

A putrid smell had filled the air, and something wet had seeped through her skirts to warm her knee. She was snapped from her focus on her movements and forced to observe the scene before her. The bastard was silenced, his body still curled over the stone, his head rolling on its side in the red-black snow beneath her feet.

Sansa retched.

Her great-uncle spun her around quickly and gathered her cloak and hair away from her face as she bent, still retching, a portion of her dinner spilling out and defiling the white snow.

"Finished, Your Grace?" he whispered. Sansa could only nod. "Keep your eyes shut—you did well, child."

"Thank you, my lord," she tried not to whimper as he led her away from the horror.

"You can open your eyes now. They will be watching."

Sansa took a deep breath and did as he suggested. Some of her lords were smiling at her, some staring at her in awe. They all seemed reverent, and none of them displeased. The Greatjon even looked _proud._

"The Queen in the North," he whispered to her as she passed him, giving a little bow. She could not keep back the tears then—tears of her own pride—and she choked on a sob, triumphant.

The lords of the North and the Vale gathered to crown her officially the following day. It was a brief and surreal affair, the great hall packed with lords and peasants alike. There had been another modest feast afterward, food hauled from the Dreadfort supplementing Winterfell's hurting stores. Walda Frey Bolton and her little child were brought weeping before her, and just as she delivered Ramsay his justice, so she gave them mercy—after all, what part had Walda Frey had in any of this?—a raven was dispatched to the twins demanding a ransom exorbitant, but not unaffordable to the turncloaks, who had been paid well by the Lannisters for their treachery. Sansa ordered them to a warm dungeon as well, to await the answer of the Lady's treasonous family.

On the final day of the gathering of her lords, Sansa gave Roose Bolton a public execution. The crowd in attendance was frightfully massive, but Sansa managed to keep her calm throughout the ordeal, watching as she hacked twice through his neck, and the blood sprayed out before her, and when the sword found the snow she drew herself up again, handed the hilt of the sword to her great-uncle, and headed back to her castle, desperately trying to keep her face from betraying how deeply shaken she felt. Harry was clutching her arm, asking her too often if she was alright, if she needed to lie down, if there was anything he could do. He could not. She was Queen in the North now, and nothing he could do would make that any easier.

After her Lords bannermen departed for their various holdfasts, Sansa held her court again. She was fatigued from the activity of the last few days, all a whirlwind in her mind; most came to present gifts and offer their services, thrilled simply to be seeing the Queen in the North in her mortal flesh. _A distinct lack of carpenters. Is carpentry a lost art in the North? _Finding herself soon bored, Sansa admonished herself for her lack of discipline. "How many more?" she asked the Knight at the door.

"Just one, Your Grace. A Holy Brother from the south, by the looks of it."

"Bring him in," she allowed. _One. Just one more. I can do this._

The brother striding into her great hall walked with a slight limp and was among the tallest men she had ever seen. There was something familiar about his build, she mused, but pushed the thought away—Sansa saw where it would lead her, and she could not go down that thought path, not now. He drew very close to the dais, and she could see it was making the Knights presently guarding her wary. She shifted in her seat, her eyes trained on the man before her. _I cannot see his face beneath that hood_.

"My Queen," he said, his voice low and gruff. It was not an unpleasant sound, though. Something inside her stirred at it, but she pushed that aside as well.

"Remove your hood, Ser," one of her Knights urged, more than a little put off by his hood. She saw the man bristle.

"Please, ser. I would look on the face of my loyal Northmen."

"No Northman, Your Grace," _Your Grace_. She knew that phrase, that voice. Sansa Stark made a tumult inside of her, but Sansa Hardyng kept herself calm.

For a moment, at least, until the man tore his hood back and revealed a curtain of lank black hair and a gaunt face with a terrible burn covering the left side of his face. "And no 'ser,' neither." She found his grey eyes, a wide-eyed hunger in them, and for a moment, Sansa was convinced her prayers were spitefully answered and this, before her, was the ghost of the Hound, come to haunt her. The grief she had pushed aside for weeks reared its head again, and Sansa Stark cried out from within her. _Oh, Sandor!_ Her heart swelled, crushing back the rest of her chest and shoulders. She half expected his form to dissolve like snow apparitions in the winter wind as she watched him, paralyzed. He saw something in her expression that discouraged him, and his face fell suddenly, the hulking man shrinking back and hanging his head, hiding beneath his lank black hair. It was really him. It had to be.

Sansa Stark wanted to sing. She wanted to spring up out of her throne and embrace him. She wanted to pummel her fists into his body for all the hells he had put her through. All at once. He had been her last hope...but he _left_ her.

Her knights recognized him and drew their swords in her defence. "Seize him," one barked, but she held up her palm to stop them.

"No. I will not have him touched."

Sandor snapped up his head at that, and again she met his eyes for a long moment. His eyes, once chips of flint, of granite, of steel, hot and hard as stone, now had a different look about them. It was not the colour that changed in them, but the temperament—what had once been steel was steam, what had once been stone was smoke—there was a tremulous quality about them, as if with one quick breath she could snuff them out. It was a fragility she was not accustomed to seeing in him, and it brought to her heart something like pity. Tenderness. He looked at her with the wide, pleading eyes of a hungry stray dog. Something must have completely and utterly broken him, that much was clear—he was not the Hound she once knew.

_Oh, Sandor..._


	12. Sansa V

A/N: Eustace Hunter is not mine, but his "Ser" is.

If you favourite/follow this fic, don't forget to write a review!

**SANSA**

She held up her palm, halting their movement at once. "I will not have him touched."

"But—"

"I will _not_ have him _touched_."

The knights prickled, but sheathed their swords. Sandor was hiding beneath his hair, his face fallen still—_look at me!_

"Thank you, Sers. You are dismissed," she said quickly, shifting in her throne.

"Your Grace?" Ser Eustace Hunter, who had ordered him seized, asked incredulously.

"I command it. Out," she said, almost curtly.

"Even me, Your Grace?"

"Even you, Ser Brynden."

She listened as their footsteps processed from the room, and the door behind them shut against the wall.

Sansa rose from her throne. _Slowly_, she told herself, lifting herself up off the arms, eyes trained on the apparition before her, still imagining that some great disturbance in the air was going to blow him away. He stayed solid, though, as her slippered feet padded over the cool stones in the hall, picking up speed of their own volition until she was loping at him, falling to her knees before him and throwing her arms around his neck, burying her face in his shoulder. His big arms caught her and clutched her to him fiercely—too fiercely to be imaginary, and his scent was too sharp, too unwashed, too truly _him_ to have been conjured from some subconscious memory. She wanted to lean back, to look at his face and cup his cheek, but that would mean letting him go, and that she could not presently do.

"Little Bird," he rasped, a whisper, the last words he had spoken to her before he left. She held him tighter at that, digging her nails into his shoulders, and he answered by shifting to hold her even closer. He was all around her, alive, and _real._

"I heard a rumour you were dead," she murmured into his shoulder. One of his big hands moved to stroke the hair cascading down her back.

"No, Little Bird. I'm not dead," he said sadly. He seemed reluctant to let her go as she slipped out of his arms, sitting back on her heels and cupping his bad cheek with her right hand, stroking his good with her left. Their eyes met again and the gaze they shared seemed to dance between them, an intimate sort of thing. His face was the same, but his expression...it was unlike anything she had ever seen him wear, save a glimmer she caught in the green glow of the wildfire the night he disappeared. She remembered the wetness she felt on his cheeks then, and how dry his cheeks felt now beneath her hands in contrast.

"You changed."

He snickered at that, a familiar, warm sort of sound. "So did you."

Sansa had to laugh. It was all so absurd. He was _here_. "I suppose I did."

He caught one of her hands in his iron grip and slowly dragged it to his lips, pausing to pull the scent of it into his lungs before pushing a kiss into it, rough but not forceful, his scar scratching against her hand as he tried to be gentle. The heart of Sansa Stark leapt and sang and fluttered, but Sansa Hardyng bolted back in fear. It was very improper, after all, and she _was_ married.

"What...what _happened _to you, Sandor?" she asked, pulling both of her hands delicately from him grip. His face fell before he answered, their eyes searching one another for a long moment.

"So, so many things, Little Bird..." he sighed, looking back into her eyes. "But I'm alright now." Another long moment passed between them, just staring. Then Sandor seemed to remember something, as he took his eyes from her and fumbled with something in the sleeves of his cowl.

Sansa jumped back and turned about as a door opened behind her. "Sansa?!" It was Harry's voice, accompanied by running footsteps.

_For Gods' sake!_

"Sansa! Your knights told me who—"

"Leave us, Harry, I assure you, I am perfectly safe in his company," Sansa insisted, watching as Sandor caught sight of Harry behind her and his searching gaze shifted into a glare.

Harry had appeared by her side by then, slipping an arm around her waist and holding a blade out before her at Sandor, who was now smirking lazily at him and crossing his arms. She noticed that the man before her on his knees was nearly as tall as her Lord Husband standing upright. She had forgotten just how _big_ he was.

"Sansa, you are _not_ safe with this man. Did you hear what—"

"Last I heard, Harrold, he was _dead_; we mustn't believe everything we hear," she said dismissively, trying to shift away from him. He pulled her tighter though, and she saw Sandor flare his nostrils at him in anger as he did. "Now, if you would be so good as to leave..." Sansa tried to push him off of her, but Harry held on.

"I will not leave you alone with this _monster_, love, I swore before the Gods to _protect_ you, gave you my _cloak_," he seemed to be speaking to Sandor, though, and not her beside him. A look of surprise came over him then, as his eyes flicked from Sansa to Harry, clutching her tight.

"Harrold, please. I am not asking."

"No, Sansa."

"My Lord Hardyng, I _command_ that you leave us _at once_," she nearly shouted in her most queenly voice, the same voice she had used with Roose Bolton two evenings before. That seemed to take him aback. He lowered his blade and Sandor leered at him, the burned corner of his lip twitching.

"As you command, my Queen." He took another moment to glare at Sandor before retreating, his footsteps echoing angry against the stones in the great hall. Sansa did not turn to watch him leave, or slam the door on his exit.

"You have a husband now," Sandor said, not asking. The intimacy of their moment was gone, as was the softness in his eyes. They were not as hard as they had once been, but there was something threatening in them. Sansa stayed where she stood.

"I do," she crossed her arms.

"...After everything Tyrion did to you, you married again?"

"Tyrion never touched me."

Sandor threw his head back and laughed. "Lost your maidenhead riding horses, is that what you told the whelp?"

"Watch your tongue, Sandor," Sansa threatened.

"Oh, pardon me, I should not say such things to a _Queen_," he scowled.

"Do not _mock_ me, Sandor, I am warning you," she was growing livid. What on earth had changed him so?

"Oh, I'm the one mocking you, am I? I'm not the one _parading _around some green little boy supposed to be my chief protector. Has he ever even _held _a sword before, do you think?"

"Do _not_ give my knights a reason to come back in here; they will _not _be as kind to you as—"

"Oh, you've got to _save _me from your precious _Knights_ now, do you? Put me in a melee, Little Bird, and watch me wipe the ground with their pretty _shining _armour. Is your little _husband_ a knight as well? A little glimmering _knight_ like you always bloody wanted?!"

"_Stop this_, Sandor, _by gods!" _ and hot tears leaked from her eyes as she shrieked. She turned to hide her eyes from him but he seemed to notice anyway, and he fell silent, her shuddering breaths echoing madly through the hall as she tried to maintain control of herself. When he spoke, his rasping voice was broken and small.

"Forgive me, Little Bird, I—"

"Your _Grace_," she hissed, correcting him as she dabbed at her eyes. He hung his head lower.

"Forgive me, Your Grace," he corrected, sombre. "I did not come here to offend you. I only wanted..." he sighed, closing his eyes for a long moment. "Just...do forgive me, Your Grace. Thank you for your patience..." Then he stood, bowed to her deeply, and turned towards the door.

He was leaving her. Again.

Sansa Stark railed and took over her then. "Stop! Wait..." He did, turning his head to listen to her over his shoulder, keeping his eyes down. "Where are you going?"

He sighed. "Not sure. I'll figure it out eventually."

"Stay." She said, before she could even think to say otherwise, and then added, "Here. I command it."

He turned, somehow looking down at her from across the room, his eyes searching hers again. "You want me to stay?"

"I _command_ it," she repeated, gritting her teeth against the tears that wanted to come again. "I lost you once. _Twice_. I will not watch you walk out that door unsure if I will ever see you again."

Something in him seemed to cave at that. All the hard edges in his expression fell away, and he swept to his knees again, more gracefully than a man of his size with an injury should be able to.

"Then I will not make you," he almost laughed, sadly. He might have whispered _Little Bird _again, holding his face in one of his hands for a moment. There was despair about him—she wanted to go to him again, hold him again, but she could not now. Those moments were gone. He looked up at her and met her eyes from across the room, and something there seemed to smoulder. "Your wish is my command, Your Grace."

Sansa swallowed, fighting back her tears, and nodded once.

"I made you something," he said quietly, standing as he withdrew that something from his sleeves. She paced towards him to take a closer look: it was a figurine, sweetly carved, of a wolf?—no, a hound, with—her heart fluttered—a little bird sitting on top of its head. She softened immediately as she took the thing in her hands.

"Oh, Sandor, its..." but the words abandoned her. Lovely was not quite right. Splendid was not right either. Perfect was too imprecise. "I will cherish it."

"Spare me your courtesy," he groaned, looking up at her and catching sight of her face as she looked at the thing and winced at his coarse words. He was silent for a moment. "Do you really like it?"

"It is the sweetest thing I have ever received, Sandor," she said, trying not to gush, "You made this yourself?"

"I did."

An idea came to her then.

"Have you been studying carpentry, Sandor?"

"Some, Your Grace."

She broke into a smile.

Though Sandor had not been sold on the idea of being a carpenter in charge of the reconstruction of Winterfell, Sansa could see that it was the only way to keep him close and relatively save.

"If I gave you a sword and put you in a room full of _knights_ from the _Vale_, each with a sword of his own, how long do you think it will take for those swords to be drawn? Sandor, they drew just at the sight of you—I will not put you in harm's way like that."

She had taken his face then, and something about her touch on his cheek made him capitulate. She could not have said what, though Sansa Stark knew full well.

Convincing Sandor to stay had been easy. Convincing the rest of her court that he was welcome was not so.

"You would have us believe that you chose to keep this—this _monster—"_

"I will not allow him to be called a monster in my presence. His name is Sandor Clegane. Choose your words wisely, Ser Eustace; you are speaking to your Queen." she had said coldly.

The knight was taken aback. "But Your Grace, you cannot expect us to allow him to _live amongst us_." Others were muttering in agreement. "Not after what he did to the city of Saltpans. If you took Ramsay Snow's head, Your Grace, take his!"

The comparison made her blood boil—though there was no proof that it had not been Sandor who had terrorized the port of Saltpans, she _knew_ like she knew her own name that it was false. He was a killer, yes—_the world was built by killers_, he had told her once—but he was not a _monster_, and the things that had happened to the port city had been monstrous indeed. _He is no monster, he was never a monster, _she thought, feeling again the wetness, not from blood, beneath her fingertips as she had cupped his cheek and sang to him, right before he had stolen a kiss...

"That is _more_ than enough, Ser Eustace! Your boldness may be a strength in battle but it is a weakness in this court," she spat, looking the knight up and down. He shrank beneath her scorn; she looked around wildly. "To anyone else who cannot find some way to _live amongst _Sandor Clegane," she thrust her open palm towards the castle entrance, "there is the door. Your horses are in the stables without. See yourselves out and live as cowards, you will get no sympathy from me." She looked around at them, staring the more vocal of the bunch in the eyes, daring them to move. No one did.

"To disobey me directly," she said very slowly, "is _treason_, Sers. Consider your actions with care. I will not have petulant _boys_ standing in my Queensguard." And she swept from the hall, her husband and great-uncle in tow.

Sandor found her in the hall without, leaning against the wall with his hair hanging in his face, his hands shoved into his armpits to keep warm. He tossed his hair from his eyes and looked up at her wide eyed, a little furrow in the good half of his brow as he caught her wrist in his iron grip and pulled her over to him.

"I could take them, Your Grace. You need make no empty threats to protect me. I do that myself." His voice was low, growling, only for her ears.

"Unhand her, you dog!" Harry spat, putting his hand on the hilt of his sword behind her. Sansa whipped her head around to face him.

"He means me no harm, Harry, calm yourself!" she turned her face to Sandor and looked up into his eyes, staring him down for a moment before he made a show to her husband of dropping her hand, not moving his eyes from hers. "I will do what I must to keep you safe. I do not care if it is not appreciated. I will not gamble with your life for the sake of your pride." And she spun on her heel, smoothing her skirts as she rejoined her husband, who took her arm possessively, and led her away.

"I came up for my first assignment, Your Grace," Sandor called after her languidly before Harry managed to extricate her from the corridor. She heard Harry sigh angrily beside her as they turned.

"Her Grace does not sleep well in the bed we share presently," Harry hissed. "Perhaps your first assignment should be to build us a new one."

"Is that what you would have of me, Your Grace?" He met her eyes, the tremulous, smoke-like quality in them resumed; something in his rasping voice had become very small.

"Humour me Sansa, just this once," Harry whispered to her.

Sansa gave a small nod.

"As you wish," Sandor growled, bowing and striding from where he had stood only a moment before. Sansa allowed herself to be led to her chambers, Harry instructing one of the new maids to bring them mulled cider. All her thoughts were tangled with one another, unable to feel anything straight. Ser Eustace made her livid, Harry was being petty. Sandor, he inspired irritation and heartbreak and affection all at once. The more she thought of him the more entangled her feelings became, until she had knotted them so tightly the whole world would have to fall away before she had the focus she needed to sort him out. Harry sat her down on the edge of their bed and settled himself beside her, taking both of her hands in his and sweetly demanding her attention with a weighted look. She sighed gently and let him stroke her face.

"Tell me."

"What would you have me tell you, My Lord?" Her expression was cold. She would be lured into no argument. He frowned at her.

"Sansa," he whimpered, pulling her to him, "_my_ Sansa. You know how I love you..." he placed a kiss on her shoulder and she could not help but stiffen beneath him. He sighed. "I am not cross with you, love, I just...I do not understand." He cradled her close. She wanted to throw him off her and sweep to her window, look out on her snow-covered moor, but she did not. "Help me understand, Sansa. I know you would not be so insistent on keeping him if you did not have good reason."

"You speak of him as though he were a stray dog!"

"Well...he sort of is."

She sighed sharply.

"Hear me, Sansa: would it not be easier to keep your peace with the Hound far, far away from your court?"

"_My _peace? My peace _depends_ on him. All those years in King's Landing, he was the only one who ever kept me safe. He was the only person, _the only person_ who ever spoke for me, who opposed the King when he would beat me, shield me when he would humiliate me. Once, King Joffrey had me stripped before the court, and as I cried and tried to cover my nakedness, Sandor threw me his cloak to cover myself. He tried every way he could to _save _me—and now, I have the power to return the favour. Tell me Harry, if you had the reputation he was cursed with, where would you go? Where could you seek solace?"

Harry thought for a long time. "You speak as though his reputation is something that happened to him. A man's reputation he builds himself."

"Not so!" Sansa cried, taking his face in her hands. "Not so, husband, I promise you this: if Sandor Clegane had the reputation he deserved, he would be revered as a fearsome warrior, an honest man..." she snickered to herself as the thought came, and had to voice it, "the truest Knight these Seven Kingdoms had ever known. He was the first brother of the Kingsguard ever appointed without a knighthood, and yet it was only he who looked out for the naive, song-headed young daughter of Eddard Stark. He tried to warn me, tried to get me to see for myself what was happening around me, and when he failed at that, he tried to save me from it. He tried to take me from it. Harry it is because of him that I made it out of there _alive_, and after he left...the world had never seemed so bleak."

He frowned at that, but did not object. "If that is your truth, my love, then I will keep it as mine...But tell me this—do you love this man, Sandor Clegane?" He brought her face very close to his, and his eyes were going out of focus at their proximity.

Sansa's throat went dry. Did she love Sandor Clegane? Sansa Stark knew, but it was her secret alone, and she kept it even from the rest of herself. She shook her head. "Not as you worry I do, Harry. I am indebted to him and endeared to him. That is the all of it." That Sansa Hardyng knew.

"Then you have my support, my dove. I hope I shall come to trust him some day as you do."

A smile spread across her face at that, and she cupped his cheek—so soft, so small—in her hand.


	13. Sandor V

A/N: Apparently I was wrong about my schoolwork. I do apologize for scarin' y'all. NEXT WEEK, THOUGH. Maybe. Just don't worry about me if I miss an update or two, 'kay?

**SANDOR**

_Bloody buggering hells. She told you to stay, dog. _He barrelled out into the cold to retrieve his horse and other belongings from the inn, wanting nothing more than to hurry back into her arms. He could still feel her silky hair beneath his fingers, the heat of her breath on his face. _Make this quick._

He packed what little he had, looking scornfully at his carpenters' tools. _The carpenter to the Queen ought to have better tools than these,_ he thought. _Not even my bloody tools are good enough for her._

Stranger looked as though he was expecting him when Sandor arrived in the stables laden with his possessions to saddle the horse. "We have a new home, boy," he said, lobbing the saddle blankets up onto the destrier's back and smoothing them out. The horse snorted, maybe an affirmation; Sandor liked to have thought so.

The black horse and rider crashed through the snow back to the castle, finding an empty stall in the stables and angry glares from every man about the courtyard. Sandor scowled and spat at his feet, glaring back and hoisting his bag over his shoulder, making his way to the little old forge the Little Bird had bestowed upon him, and the quarters adjacent. The place was dank, stained from centuries of smoke, the ceilings uncomfortably low, but it seemed to keep warmth inside, at least, and there was plenty of space for building. The quarters also were comfortable enough, but Sandor could not help his awareness of just how _far_ they were from hers. He peered out the little leaded window, his view obscured by the too-thick and bubbled glass, at the castle looming above, and wondered which of the windows he could see, if any, were hers. _You should be in there, dog, guarding her while she sleeps and eats_, he thought angrily, clenching his fists again. _But this is what she would have of you. _

_Her wish is my command, _he had said to the knight. He scowled to himself. _Never thought she would wish you to be a bloody carpenter, did you dog? _But she had been insistent. His pride had been hurt that the Little Bird thought it _her_ place to protect _him,_ but whatever shred of rationality he had knew she had a point.

"You said it yourself, _Your Grace_," he had spat, "You will not watch me walk away again. My place is by your side, not down here in some buggering old forge building _tables_ and _chairs_..." but she had put a finger to his lips then, slipped her hand over his cheek, and quieted him.

"If I gave you a sword and put you in a room full of _knights_ from the _Vale_, each with a sword of his own, how long do you think it will take for those swords to be drawn?" she asked sweetly. Her eyes were on his, her hand on his cheek. He could not resist her then. And she was right in her thinking, after all. "Sandor, they drew just at the sight of you—I will not put you in harm's way like that." She sounded so afraid for him. He wanted to scowl, to laugh—as if any buggering _knight_ could threaten him—but she was _holding _him. How could he scowl when she was _holding_ him?

She had held him earlier, too. When she first caught sight of him, after all her bloody knights had left them. She had run to him, just like he had always wanted her to, and he caught her, so soft, so little, sweet-smelling, all gathered up in his arms. She clutched at him fiercely, digging her fingernails into his shoulders, cleaving to him like he had cleaved to her memory all those agonizing years. It had all been over too soon. If she had not let go until summer came again, it would have been over too soon.

He dropped his bag in his chambers—he was satisfactorily moved in, he judged—and ventured into the castle to find her, to hear what she would have him do now. She had gathered an audience of her knights in the great hall, so he wandered in the corridor around it. He found a door just without the hall and waited beside it, listening to the music of her voice carry through the castle. He listened harder when he heard his name. "...there is the door. Your horses are in the stables without. See yourselves out and live as cowards, you will get no sympathy from me," and he listened as her angry footsteps made his way.

She floated by him, unaware, until he caught her slender wrist in his fingers, pulling her to him. She came willingly.

"I could take them, Your Grace," he meant to say reassuringly. It came out in a growl. "You need make no empty threats to protect me. I can do that myself." Her wide blue eyes were trained on his, unabashed, (_unafraid!_) and would have held her there and stared at her forever, interlacing his fingers with hers, sliding a hand around her waist...

But the blond whelp was addressing him, "Unhand her, you dog!" and laying his fingers on the hilt of his sword, all bravado. Sandor was almost tempted to see if the boy knew how to wield it, but would not subject his Queen to such a display. He was her _husband_, however unworthy; she must have had some affection for him.

_Don't delude yourself, dog. She loves him. Wives love their husbands. _But the Little Bird was squawking at her whelp, and Sandor had to repress the sneer that bubbled up from within him. She turned her attention back to him and he found he could not look away from her, even holding up the Little Bird's wrist, pointedly releasing it from his grasp, to taunt the ignorant boy who saw him as a threat to her safety.

"I will do what I must to keep you safe. I do not care if it is not appreciated. I will not gamble with your life for the sake of your pride." She spoke softly, her eyes hot and sharp in his. They were gone too soon. She spun away and stepped dutifully into the arms of her little _protector_, wrenching her closer as he glared at Sandor finally before turning and ushering her away.

"I came up for my first assignment, Your Grace," he said lazily, knowing she would respond, pulling her back just when the whelp thought he had her. He could hear his sigh from the other end of the corridor, and let himself have a little triumphant smile.

But it was the whelp who addressed him. "Her Grace does not sleep well in the bed we share presently. Perhaps your first assignment should be to build us a new one."

_A bed to share? That's low,_ Sandor thought, a coldness leaking into his stomach from his heart. He looked at the Little Bird, blushing but looking at him straight. He asked her, and choked on the question, "Is that what you would have of me, Your Grace?"

After a moment, she nodded.

"As you wish," he rasped, bowing to her, and removed himself from the corridor as quickly as he could.

_Bugger that whelp,_ Sandor thought, _build you a bed to fuck my Little Bird in, you insolent little shit?!_ _Little Bird isn't sleeping well. Whose fault is that, whelp?..._Impotent_ little shit, more like..._He chuckled darkly. The more Sandor thought about it, the more spitefully he liked the idea. It would be _Sandor's_ bed the Little Bird got into every night, _Sandor's_ bed that would give her a place to feel safe and warm and peaceful, _Sandor's_ bed that cradled her even when her little boy husband was finished with her. He liked the idea very much. If it were only his bed in truth! _ As close as you are like to get, dog. Count yourself lucky. She will think of you every night as she lays herself down in it—that should be enough for the likes of you._ What a gift the whelp had given him!

Sandor threw himself into the planning of the thing with gusto. It would be a grand four-poster bed with a high headboard, splendidly carved as befit a Queen. He remembered the twining knot work he had decorated the altar with back on the Quiet Isle and refashioned it so that it was made up of hounds and wolves entwined, snickering to himself all the while. They would decorate the posts, he decided; for the headboard he planned a pattern made out of florid vines and little birds, and the footboard, more wolves and hounds. He figured out the dimensions of the thing and began mock-ups of the various patterns on scrap pieces of firewood; he would find the wood to construct the thing on the morrow, pouring his whole being into its creation. _If the Little Bird isn't sleeping well, we had best remedy that. _He was grinning. _I could remedy that alright..._

_Check yourself, dog,_ he growled at himself. He had nearly lost control once already, after the Little Bird unwrapped her arms from his neck when they were alone in the throne room. Taking her hand was just the beginning of all he had wanted in that moment, all he was compelled to do. Claiming her lips would have come next—married or not, she was_ his_ Little Bird—but she had pulled away, ever a dutiful little thing. He could not help his discouragement, but she did not seem disgusted. If anything, she too had been reluctant to pull away. If he had gotten her the figurine in _that_ moment, and she had reacted just as sweetly as she later did, he would have kissed her then. He knew it. But then her bloody husband had come in before could give it to her and wrecked it all, brought the moment back to reality, where he was a wanted, lowborn scoundrel and she the most magnificent of Queens.

Her husband. If anything wounded Sandor's pride, it was her husband. Sandor would have hardly believed it if the lad had claimed to weigh ten stone, and was of a height with his Queen wife. Everything about him was slight, Sandor noticed, his voice a whimpering high tenor, his hair a limp straw yellow. And yet the Little Bird had accepted his cloak as protection, depended on it, and indeed, had won herself the North with it. Without him. _It could not have been as difficult as I thought, then..._

Meeting the whelp had made him cross, and in his anger he forgot himself, until the Little Bird started to cry. All the heat in his veins left him then like smoke dissipating into the air, and oh, how he wanted to hold her in that moment. But it would have been wrong—he was just a wanted, lowborn scoundrel, after all. And she was the most magnificent of Queens.

And so he did as he was bid, and built her a bed.

Once he got the pieces together for the framework, he worked night and day until the thing was finished, working the patterns from the wood with a chisel she brought to him herself.

"I hope you plan on doing some more carving, someday," she had said shyly as his fingers closed around her hand, gripping the handle of the little tool. He took it from her and set it aside, keeping his hand on hers.

"If it pleases you, my Queen."

She had looked up at him then, with a little smile. "It does. I keep the hound you made me at my dressing-table, so he can keep watch over me while I am in my chambers."

"Not as good as the real thing, Your Grace, I promise you that," he said boldly, thinking about petting her hair or placing a kiss on top of her head.

But then she slipped her fingers from beneath his and she turned shy again. "I really must be getting back to my duties, Sandor. But I wanted to see you."

She paused in the doorway and let him have her eyes one last time. "I wanted to see you too, Your Grace," he repeated, unable to think of anything else to say.

It was a half smile she gave him then, but he took it. Took it into his breast as she shut the door against the cold behind her, gathered it up with all the other little smiles she had given him over the years, _so many since Winterfell_, he thought, and fed himself with them. _She is my peace_, he had told the Elder Brother. _Isn't that the truth..._

He dipped the tool into the wood then, scooping out anything that was not meant for her, sanding it and shaping it, blowing the sawdust from the thing so closely he might have kissed it. With every sweep of the tool he thought of her, sometimes savouring the memories he already had of her, sometimes indulging in memories he wished he had. He wished he knew what her smiling little lips felt like, on his cheek, or his neck, or under his own. He wished he knew what her hands felt like knotted in his hair, or flat against his chest, or...

_Check yourself, dog! _And he carved furiously; _you will not be the one sharing this bed with her. Wishing it were so will gain you nothing. Stop pretending._

And furiously he carved.

When the decorations were finished and he had admired his work for long enough, he carefully broke down the bed and carried it into the castle. Upon finding her chambers he disassembled the bed she had been sharing with the whelp and erected his own in its place. He bribed a washerwoman to find him silks to drape from the posts, and when he was finished it was a lovely thing indeed he had built. _Fit for the Queen_. The whelp might have commissioned it for his wife, but Sandor had built the bed for _his_ Little Bird.

He could not help himself—he imagined what it would be like to lay her in it, wrapped up in satins and silks, the bed puffed up with soft feathers and more pillows than any girl could ever want. He imagined what her red hair would look like spilling out over clean white linens, the radiant ivory of her skin unable to hide the flush in it, the blue of her eyes the same colour as the moonlight that might be spilling in from the window. He imagined the grip of her fingers on his arms and shoulders as he lowered her down, her breath on his face as he bent to kiss her forehead, her happy sigh as he tucked in the furs and quilts around her. He would not imagine...not now, anyway. He would wait for darkness and privacy. It was still light yet.

"Her Grace requests entrance, m'lord," the maid at the door was saying. Sandor nodded and uncrossed his arms.

"Tell her to close her eyes."

The maid disappeared and a moment later the Little Bird tiptoed into the chamber, her eyes closed and a smile on her face.

"Can I look now, Sandor?" She might have been giggling. It was a beautiful sound.

"Not yet, Little Bird," he said, using her nickname again for the first time since the throne room. She did not correct him, but her smile got a little bit bigger. His heart sang. "No peeking, now!"

He took her elbow in his left hand and let the fingertips of his right rest between her shoulder blades. Gingerly he guided her across the room, letting her giggle and beg as often as she liked, until he stood her at the foot of the bed, turned her the way he wanted her to see, and folded his own palms over her eyes.

"Alright, Little Bird, open your eyes," he rasped, his heart racing. She reached up to move his hands as he lifted them away from her face, keeping her grip on them even after she had gasped, gushing over the thing, using words like _lovely _and _brilliant_ and _stunning_ and _perfect_. She let him go for a moment to run her fingers along the patterns in the footboard for a moment before spinning and leaping up to embrace him, and he caught her fast around her waist, something in his chest threatening to burst as he held her to him, her feet off the ground and her breath on his neck.

She leaned back after a long moment, but he did not put her down. She did not seem to want him to, though, as she brushed a piece of hair away from the burned side of his face, looking down at him so boldly and smiling still. "Are those wolves I saw in the patterns?"

"They are, Your Grace. And little birds too."

She beamed, but her face fell for a moment before she asked, "what about hounds?"

Sandor smiled so big he thought his face would break. "Aye, Little Bird. Hounds too."

"Are they with the wolves or the birds?"

"Both." He turned so she could look on it again without putting her down, and reached out to point out his designs on one of the posts. "The little birds have the hounds to protect them, see? And the hounds," he slipped his arm back around her again, "have the wolves to protect _them_."

"I thought hounds could protect themselves," she whispered, petting his hair. _She's petting you, lucky dog. Savour this._

He sighed happily, laying his head on her shoulder. "Usually they can, Your Grace. But sometimes they need a wolf to guard their backs."

"Any kind of wolf in particular?" She asked. She was playing with a lock of his hair now, and looking straight into his eyes. _She is flirting with me. Seven save me, she is flirting with me._

"Direwolves are preferable, my lady," and that was it. He had to kiss her. He pulled his head off her shoulder and moved a hand from her waist to cradle the back of her head, but before he could pull her to him a pair of footsteps echoed in the corridor without.

"That will be Harry. You had better put me down before he comes in," she said, still stroking his hair.

"And if I refuse?" he rasped, ducking his head back against her shoulder.

"Do not put me in that position, Sandor," she whispered sadly, her hand stilling. His heart sank, and he lifted her gently to the ground.

And just like that, the moment was gone; he was just a wanted, lowborn scoundrel again. And she, the most magnificent of Queens.


	14. Sansa VI

A/N: Don't forget to review! They make me write better!

**SANSA**

At the next moon's turn, life was beginning to normalize in Winterfell. The Queen in the North had her routine: watch the sunrise; bathe and dress; break her fast with her Hand, her guests, and her husband; hold morning court; eat her luncheon; meet with her Hand to discuss matters of import; eat her supper; rest for the coming day. The establishment of such a routine gave her a sense of comfort, but there was a part of her that felt as though something was missing..._someone_ was missing.

But it would have been folly to name him to her Queensguard, even though it pained her to see the hurt and rage on his face when she denied him the honour. He was a better warrior than all of her knights of the Vale—no right-minded person could deny that—but with all her men of the Vale so scornful of him, antagonistic and convinced of his guilt in the Saltpans massacre, asking him to serve her amongst them would have prescribed disaster. And Sansa could not have that. Better to keep him safe and at a distance than near and in danger.

There were other motivations for charging him with the rebuilding of her castle—as ill-mannered as he was, Sandor only wanted to please her, she knew, and he would do everything in his power to make her home _her home_ again. He might not know the castle as well as a native Northman, but his determination would make up for that, she was sure. Sansa saw very little immediate danger in her current position—she was not treating with dangerous characters on a daily basis as of yet—her biggest weakness was the weakness of her castle, which he was tasked with fortifying. If she could help Sandor to understand that, he might not be so injured over the whole thing. And also (though it was only Sansa Stark who would admit it) having Sandor at her side night and day would be incredibly distracting. She knew in her heart that she would be ever-tempted to leap into his arms again, or find some excuse to cup his cheek or stroke his hair. But she had a husband to be faithful to. _This will get easier, in time_, she told herself. _It is only because you are just now seeing him again that he overwhelms you so. When he loses his novelty, this will get easier._ It had to.

The bed Sandor had built her was a beauty, truly, and there was no question in her mind that he had built it for her alone. It had felt like intrusion when Harrold had come in to see it, only a moment after Sandor had put her down and rasped in her ear, "I hope it helps you get some rest, Your Grace." His voice had nearly broken her heart; she had wanted to reach out and take his hand again, pull him back to her, take away the pain in his voice with a caress, or with another kiss. He had come so _close_ to kissing her, just like the night of the Blackwater—she had seen it in his eyes—but she knew Harry's footsteps when she heard them. _Family, Duty, Honour_ had been her mother's words, and they were as much in her as her father's. Harry was intrinsically linked to all three. Sansa sighed, trying to squeeze her heart back together as Harry slipped an arm around her shoulders, praising the thing; Sandor had already removed himself from the room, his heavy footfalls echoing fainter every time they beat against the naked stone floors of the corridor.

That night, Sansa had let herself into bed before Harry had turned in for the night, lying on her stomach for a while beneath the furs, staring at the patterns in the headboard. There were little flowers everywhere, blooming off their vines, and little birds perched on hounds' heads. _Just like the little figurine he gave me,_ she thought, turning to look over her shoulder at it with a smile. Turning back she pushed her fingers into the negative space of the carving, feeling how soft and smooth everything was, caressing the ridges in the wood, trying to memorize it. It really was magnificent work. _Fit for a Queen,_ she thought, sighing happily. She turned her attention back to the flowers; were they—_did he really?_—_jonquils?_ Sansa gasped, her heart fluttering. _He remembered! _It layered the carvings with a new kind of beauty that only she could see.

It was three weeks before she found the time to speak to Sandor again. Part of her felt guilty she did not visit him more often, if only under the pretence of checking up on his work. Stealing away during her lunchtime, Sansa fetched mulled wine, bread and cheese for herself and her carpenter on a little tray from the kitchens, bundled herself up in her heaviest cloak, and closed the distance between the entrance and his forge as quickly as she could.

"Seven hells," he cursed, scowling as she threw the door open, a gust of wind preceding her, his expression softening to something almost sheepish when he caught sight of his intruder. "Pardon, Your Grace. I was not expecting you."

"I know it. There is nothing to pardon. May I eat with you, My Lord?" She asked, chirping as she sat up on an unoccupied workbench and set the tray down next to her. He put down the tools in his hands, a half-finished table in the middle of the once-forge, and dusted his big hands off on his breeches. It was warm enough to part from her cloak within the workshop Sansa decided, and so (trying to distract herself as Sandor laced up his own tunic hastily, which he must have opened in the heat) she untied it and folded it beside her. Sandor paced around the table, eyeing her carefully, as though he wanted to savour the moment.

"Certainly, Your Grace. To what do I owe the honour?" He leaned against the workbench beside her, the tray between them.

"No reason specifically." She poured a horn of steaming mulled wine and held it out for him to take.

"Sick of the company of simpering fools?" He snarled, laughing, as he reached to take the wine from her, sliding his hands over hers as he did and holding them there between the hot horn of wine and his warm, rough-calloused hands for a moment. "Your hands are freezing, Your Grace. You should see that they are kept warmer."

"I am sick of no one's company," she insisted, glaring at him petulantly, "I just miss seeing you, is all." She pulled her hands from under his and poured herself a cup of the mulled wine, sipping it gingerly.

"Then let me come up."

Sansa sighed. "Sandor, that is not what I—" But he cut her off, his smoke-gray eyes boring into hers. He placed a large hand on her arm.

"It was. You know it was. You want me in your Queensguard."

"I will not have this conversation with you again, my lord," she said with finality. Sandor ignored it.

"I am the most loyal sword you have here, Your Grace, and yet I am shut down here doing naught that I am good for. Let me guard you. Give one of those buggering fools the task of building them all places to put their arses when they are too weak to stand at your attention."

Sansa closed her eyes. He was nearly shouting at her; not what she had imagined when the whim had struck her to eat with him. "Sandor. I will not plead with you to stop this nonsense. I have made my decision—"

He took her chin in his hand roughly and tilted her face up at him. Anger flared up in both of them. "_Look _at me! I am worth _two score_ of their bloody—"

"_Unhand me_," she snarled, gripping his wrist with her hand and pulling his hand off her face. He looked surprised for a moment and did as he was bid, turning away from her shamefully and walking several paces away into a pool of gray light coming in from a window.

"A thousand pardons, Your Grace. I forgot myself," he rasped in a small, broken voice, taking a long pull off his horn of wine.

"That you did. You are pardoned, my lord, but I have to insist that I will _not_ amend your assignment. Not yet anyway. Not _one_ of my knights of the Vale would give half the attention to fixing this castle properly as you would. As you _are_. I need you _here_."

"What if the Lannisters come?" he asked, bitterness welling up in the back of his voice, still too shamed to look at her. "What if that Targaryen bitch finds her way to Winterfell? What then?" He looked up from her feet, his eyes smouldering with something like anger. _Worry_.

"Then, I figure, you would find your way to my side and I would be powerless to remove you, whether I put you there or not," she said brightly, trying to lighten the mood, tearing a chunk off of the loaf of bread for him, and cutting him a little piece of cheese. His eyes were smouldering with something different when she looked up to hand him his food, a little smirk on his lips.

"Aye, Little Bird. That you would," and he tore into the bread, baring his teeth.

She beckoned him to sit and he obliged, sliding up close beside her and sharing his warmth. He was closer than propriety would allow, but Sansa was not about to complain. She could smell the sharp tang of his sweat against the earthy musk of wood, and remembered how much she liked that smell. It reminded her of King's Landing, she realized, but also of the cloak she had not let herself see since before her wedding, stained by blood and mud and fire, smelling only faintly of him as she had kept it at the bottom of her chest beneath all her summer silks. Last time she had picked it up to wrap around herself—the first evening she had been six-and-ten—she had noticed it smelled like both of them—like him, but also like her. She had wished all of her things smelled like that.

"Also," she began, covering her mouth as she chewed, "the poor state of my castle really seems to be my biggest weakness at present. You can think of your work rebuilding the castle as fortifying my greatest weakness."

He thought on that for a minute, furrowing his brow as he chewed and swallowed more primly than she expected of him.

"That would be patching your curtain walls, replacing that gods-forsaken portcullis. Not building you bleeding tables and chairs for all your bloody knights," he emptied his horn of wine. "If I may say so."

"You may. But I will not have you working out in the cold. Winter is coming."

He laughed at that. "Winter is coming? Winter is _here_, Little Bird, take a look outside!"

But she shook her head. "There is daylight yet. Winter has not come in earnest."

"The maesters say it has been Winter for two years, Your Grace," he sliced the cheese with his knife and held it out to her. She plucked it from his hands and nibbled on a corner.

"The last summer was a decade long. I give this Winter three more years, at best." Sandor shook his head, glancing at her sideways and giving her a little smile before shaking his head. "What is it?" she asked, cocking her head to the side. He only shook his head again. "Tell me!"

He sighed, and brushed his thumb against her hairline. "Only that spring has already come for me. There are little birds singing to me on the wind, after all."

She could only smile and blush in response.

That night, though, as she laid with Harry in their marriage bed, she could not help a heavy sense of confusion and guilt settling in her chest. It was the man who slept beside her, with his hands around her waist, who had the right to her love. And Sansa wanted to give it to him. She wanted to lavish upon him all the affections he was due, after all he had done for her. He had put his cloak around her shoulders and vowed to protect her before gods and men. He had taken her maidenhead, spilled his seed inside her, and taken her back to her home.

And when she had needed Sandor the most, he had left her.

_But..._ Sansa Stark insisted, a wordless thought, true as the winter snow, and sighed in frustration with herself. _Uncle Benjen used to say nothing anyone says before "but" really counts..._

_If I could only speak to Father about this,_ she thought, a lump forming in her throat.

_I could go to the Godswood._

She flew out of bed to dress, gathering cloaks and furs about her shoulders, and pulling on thick stockings and boots. Harry muttered something sleepily, probably asking her if anything was wrong. "Not to worry dear. I am going to the Godswood to pray."

"Do you want me to..."

"No, you sleep." He groaned in agreement, burrowing himself further beneath the furs, a white puff of his breath hanging bright in the air above him. Sansa wrapped her face tightly with a woolen scarf, pulled on a pair of sheepskin gloves—_your hands are freezing, Your Grace_, Sandor's voice echoed in her head, _you should see that they are kept warmer_—and set out.

Beneath her boots crunched the icy crust on top of the snow, gleaming bright blue in the moonlight. She could have made the walk blind out the heart tree, her feet practised at padding through the dense little forest about the hot springs. The air got warmer on her cheeks as she drew closer to the weirwood, sinking before the sombre little face carved into the trunk and settling her skirts around her. She bowed her head.

_Gods of my father and his father before him; this night I come to pray for guidance. Help me to be the good, loving, faithful wife my husband deserves..._There was resistance within her at that thought. _Why, Gods, do I balk at such a thought?_ _Why can I not be thankful for what good you have given me, and love him like I know I should?_

The tree was silent. The winds were still. She sat before it, hardly breathing, not wanting to miss her answer because of some selfish sigh. _These are not your Gods, Sansa Hardyng,_ the silence seemed to mean, _you are not of the North. These are the Gods of Sansa Stark._

_Stark,_ the wind whispered with the voice of her younger brother.

And the Gods had brought Sansa _Stark_ the man she had asked for.

_Please, Gods,_ she pleaded again, insistent, _please. All I want is the grace to love the husband that I—_

_What was that?_

She felt it again—a little thing, a movement in her belly, something pushing against her, only for a moment...Her hands flitted under her cloaks, and she felt it again. Her heart stopped and threatened to burst.

_Quickening_, the tree whispered. _Edwyn Hardyng Stark._


	15. Sandor VI

A/N: I tried to get this one up last night before the internet timed out, but I just missed it. Sorry guys!

**SANDOR**

Everything was black and everything hurt. It seemed right to groan, so he did.

"Are you awake already?" it was her voice. Her sweet voice. He forced his eyes to open and focus, and there she was, pulling a little kettle out of the fire and pouring it into a bowl of rags. _Boiling wine. Why is she boiling wine?_ Sandor blinked, and felt something wet and sticky on his face, and a shot of pain through his brow.

"Bugger," he cursed under his breath, trying to lift his fingers to his face, his hand coming nowhere close. He dropped again, and she gave him a little sigh.

"Oh Sandor. Sandor, Sandor, Sandor..." she said disapprovingly, kneeling by his side with her bowl of hot wine and rags, frowning. His name was music in her voice. He wanted her to say it again.

"Mmph," was all he managed in the way of asking for it.

"How does your head feel?" she asked. She was looking him in the eye, but he could not quite focus enough to look right back, as much as he wanted to.

"Oh, well...ugh," he slurred. His head was pounding, but it was dulled by the alcohol in him. _Still drunk? How did I manage—oh..._

He turned his head away from the Little Bird just in time to vomit on the floor beside him. Even through the haze of his drunkenness, he could feel shame creeping over him like a shadow. The Little Bird reached out with a handkerchief and dabbed at his lip, and he turned back to face her. "Pardons, Y'Grace." She laughed at him, dipping her long little fingers into the bowl of hot wine and pulling out a rag, wringing it out gingerly before laying it across his brow as gently as she could, a white-hot blaze of pain shooting out from behind it. "_Seven Hells!_"

"That's more like the Sandor I know," she laughed. "Just try and sit still while I get you cleaned up, can you do that?"

He sighed in response.

"Do you remember what happened?" she asked, wringing out another little rag.

"Erm..."

"Because I would hear it from your point of view before I pass judgement."

"Erm..." Sandor felt like he had just ridden through a melee against ten Ser Gregor Cleganes...For all he knew, that was what had happened. "I don't, Y'Grace." She wrung out another rag and wrapped it around his knuckles. "Did I displease Your Grace?"

She sighed. "Do not worry about such things. You need not be so polite right now, my lord," she tied a little knot in the rag and looked back up at him, frowning for a moment before a mischievous smile crept across her mouth. "After all, you just _narrowly_ avoided vomiting all over my gown."

"Trying to make up for that, Y'Grace."

She laughed again. He felt triumphant and tried to smile back for a moment, before a stab of pain in his left eye and an improving grip on his mental state made his smile fall. "But I did displease Your Grace. I can tell."

The Little Bird sighed, putting her bowl down and gently taking his face in her fingertips, brushing a stray piece of hair away from his burned side. "Yes, but it was my fault, not yours, my lord."

Sandor tried to furrow his brow, causing some pain and a little dribble of warm wine to creep down his nose. "How is that, Your Grace?"

She pursed her lips, using her handkerchief to dab at the runaway wine. "You were taking advantage of the celebratory wine when, as I have been led to believe, one of the Knights from the Vale called you 'Hound'. I am then informed that you punched him in the throat, and four of his friends attacked you at that point, all of you kicking and punching. Soon it was a proper brawl. Ser Mychel Redfort claims you bit his hand, but he refuses to show it to me, so I doubt his claim." She recited this as though it were nothing, as though it were normal behaviour, adjusting the bandages and dabbing at his face carefully. The shadow of his shame gained weight and began to press on him.

"Did I really? Forgive me Your Grace, I—"

"There is nothing to forgive. I told you this was all my fault, and I meant it. You never would have had so much to drink if not..." She stood then. "I am going out to get you some snow for that eye of yours. Stay here." And she swept out the door, leaving him alone in the room.

His head was swimming, but gradually it was coming back to him.

There were cauldrons full of mulled wine by the training yard for all the soldiers. "In celebration," everyone was insisting, but Sandor was in no mood to celebrate. He was putting away tankards of the wine as though it was water and he was inflicted with an unquenchable thirst. Sandor drank quickly, alone, leaning against a stone wall close enough to the cauldrons so that he could smell the cloves and citrus thick on the air. Needing to relieve himself, he fought his way over to the gap some battle had knocked in the inner curtain wall (that he was in charge of fixing, he remembered sourly) and climbed through it, standing over the frozen moat with a number of other drunken men loyal to Her Grace, and contributed what he could to it, steam coming up from the hole in his breeches, cold fingers of air snaking down his legs. He laced his breeches back up and spun around, probably too quickly, to stumble through the hole in the wall again.

Time for another tankard.

Sandor briefly considered abandoning the ladle and dunking his mug straight into the cauldron, but he wanted to avoid drawing attention to himself. He sloshed three deep ladlefuls into his tankard and slunk off with it, putting it to his lips hastily and gulping it down, tongue well and truly burned by then.

The tankard was gone. He needed to piss again.

Walking was proving itself more of a challenge now, but that did not deter him from going straight back to the cauldrons for another tankard once he was back from the moat. He must have nudged some little squire (he _looked_ like a squire, at any rate) in his way back to the wine, and seven damn him if the bugger didn't have a mouth on him.

"Oi! Watch yourself, you bloody dog!"

Sandor whipped around and grabbed the boy by his brown tabard, yanking him close. "What did you just call me, boy?"

"I called you a bloody dog—that's what you are, isn't it? A dog? A _Hound?_"

"Leave him, Hunter," one of the lad's friends must have said, watching as the burned corner of Sandor's mouth twitched. He threw his tankard down on the ground and lifted the boy off the ground with both his hands, bringing him up to his eye level. He was starting to look afraid, staring at the ruin of Sandor's face, his eyes all swollen up and his face paling.

Sandor knew that look—as long as he could remember, he had known it—it made him even angrier. "I have a lot of hurt on my mind right now, boy. There is nothing I want more than to _beat_ someone _bloody_. So I'm warning you, boy. Call me dog _one more time_," he growled lowly into the boy's ear before dropping him on the ground.

He had turned to pick up his tankard when he heard the defiant little squeak. "_Hound._"

The soldiers around them had stilled. Sandor drew himself up straight, ignoring his tankard on the ground, and turned slowly, glowering down at the boy, his mouth twitching. He took a deep breath.

_Forgive me, Little Bird._

And threw his fist into the boy's throat.

Before he knew it there were two more on him, landing punches on his arms, his back, his chest. Nobody could reach his face, tall as he was. Sandor was stronger than all of them, picking up one boy and throwing him into the other, shoving them aside like the gnats they were. Already he was feeling guilty—as appealing as the _thought_ of a decent fight had been, he had neglected to realize that he would be fighting against green boys—and he tried to hurt them as little as possible. Sometimes someone from the crowd would jeer at him, and if Sandor could tell who it had been with relative ease, he would pull that lad into the fight as well. Soon he had an orchestrated brawl going on about him and he forgot his gentility, his own violent rage the epicentre of the chaos that consumed them. It numbed him, like he had hoped the wine would.

"Stop this madness! I command it!" A woman's voice shrieked, shouting over the brawling. _Her _voice. Sandor sank to his knees immediately.

But some tough lad came at him with a gauntlet and the world went black.

The door opened and brought him back to the dark little room in the castle, the low fire burning behind some lump of furniture casting the room in a dull orange glow. The Little Bird was back with a cloth full of hard snow; she knelt before him, her pretty little face coming back into view as she gingerly set it against his left eye, holding it there with her thumb while her other fingers cupped his cheek. He swallowed, looking up at her. Her lips twitched into a little smile when he did, only for a moment.

"Remember anything now?" she whispered.

"Some of it. I remember the fighting."

"Did you bite Ser Mychel?"

"I don't think so, Your Grace."

She smiled, but it fell quickly from her face. Her expression was so full of concern—he wanted to hold her and tell her he would be fine, not to worry about him, but he was not sure how that would feel.

"What possessed you to lure those men into a brawl, Sandor? What on earth were you thinking?" She pleaded, kneeling beside him and taking his face in both of her hands, nuzzling her forehead against his good cheek, _almost_ embracing him. He tried to kiss her temple without moving too much, lest she should think he was twisting away from her. One of his arms found its way around her waist, but she drew herself upright then.

And when he looked into her eyes again, he remembered.

Sandor had been making the most of the five hours of daylight they had in Winterfell to see about fixing the thrice-damned portcullis, all burnt and bent and twisted out of shape. It was the weakest point in the castle, he judged, seeing as the gaps in the curtain walls were narrow and difficult to climb over. Those could wait for spring, when the mortar for the bricks would not freeze as he tried to lay them. He would have to find a blacksmith, he had just realized, when a page had come puffing across the yard to him.

"Ser Clegane...milord..." Sandor scowled at the boy as he tried to catch his breath. "Her grace...Your presence...Her solar..._Seven save me_, it's cold out here..."

Sandor left the boy behind as he strode into the castle. _Like a good mutt, coming when she calls,_ he growled to himself. Yet he would get a chance to speak to her again—twice in so many days. Mayhaps his luck was changing.

He was not sure how he knew the way to her solar, but he found it immediately, slipping in and shutting the door behind himself with a bow. "You summoned me, Your Grace?" he asked. He would have been disgusted with the hopeful, almost giddy sound of his voice if he had not been so hopeful and giddy to begin with. She stood by a window across the room, in the light diffused from outside of it, her skin aglow. _She is so radiant. _There was a moment of silence before she spoke to him, closing her eyes as if something pained her. "You look radiant today, if I may say so."

A little smile came over her as she finally glanced at him. "You may. Have a seat, Sandor."

He did as she bid, trying not to look so eager as he sat down in the small chair nearest to him, scooting it closer to her as she glided over and took the chair beside him, turning so she could face him better. There was a crease in her brow, and her lip looked as though she had been worrying it for some time. He glanced back up into her eyes—there seemed to be an apology there, waiting for him.

His heart sank, but he could not have said why. _Is something amiss with my Little Bird?_ Instinctively he reached out for one of her little hands, pulling it into both of his. To his delight she poked her fingers up between his, entwining them together, and moved her thumb in little circles on his palm, but she was still frowning.

"Sandor, I...I have been trying to figure out what to say for some time, but I...I know not what—"

"Just out with it, Little Bird," he rasped as softly as he could, giving her hand a little reassuring squeeze. She shuffled herself nearer to him, her knee bumping into his outstretched fingers. He let his fingertips rest there, trying to think more about what she was about to say to him than the fact that his paw was almost on the Little Bird's _knee_.

"Sandor, I—" she took a sharp little breath in, her eyes widening for a moment, pulling back her hands. She relaxed a moment later, and continued. "Well, here, let me show you."

She slid her little hand over one of his big ones and picked it up, dragging it up over her legs to her belly, where she placed his palm flat against her. A heat flared up in his groin and he resisted the urge to grab, to pull her to him. _Is she trying to tell me she wants me?! _He thought, ecstatic, but only for a moment, because through the fabric of her gown he felt a little beat.

Like...like...

He felt the colour drain from his face.

_Like a little kick, dog._

He pushed back, stood and made for the door as quickly as his legs would carry him, his chair clattering forgotten to the floor. So the whelp had gotten her with child._ She _is _his wife,_ he thought, trying to calm his jealousy as his mind cycled through a number of private, disgusting mental images Sandor had wanted no part of.

"Sandor, _wait_," she commanded, his hand already on the door handle. He stopped, but did not turn around. He did not want to be angry with her. It was not her fault—_I guess the whelp isn't so impotent after all. Bugger him. _But he _was_ angry, more so with every beat of his heart. "_Look at me_," she pleaded.

He turned, looking at her feet first, then at her knees, where his hand had so nearly been, then at her bodice, her neckline, her chin, her eyes. She had a fierce sort of sadness on her face as she looked up at him. _You hurt her, dog. Go ease her pain._

"Forgive me, Your—"

"Just...please. Stay here. Please."

He walked over and picked his chair up, setting himself back into it with a sigh, leaning his elbows on his knees as he reached for her hand again. She clutched his hands as though she depended on them for her survival.

_Maybe she does, dog. Wouldn't you like that?_

"Sorry to have...shown you like that. I just...I did not know how to tell you. It was improper of me."

"Bugger that. Do you think I care about propriety? Me?" He managed to make her smile with that, and stroking her hand, he brought it up and placed a chaste little kiss on her knuckles. "Let me show you what I think of your _propriety,_ Little Bird," and he flipped her hand over and hungrily kissed her palm. He let the heat of his jealousy turn into a different sort of heat in his blood as he placed another kiss on the heel of her hand, then the juncture of her wrist.

But then he felt her pulling away, and stopped.

"Should I apologize, Your Grace?" he asked darkly, looking up through his lashes at her. She swallowed and shook her head. Lacing his fingers between hers, he brought their hands back to the empty space between them, and shook away the hair that had fallen in his eyes.

"I am sorry to subject you to this, Sandor," she whispered, looking down at the floor. He tilted her face back up to look at him with his thumb and forefinger.

"Bugger that, Little Bird. This has naught to do with you. It's your whelp husband who should be sorry."

She chuckled once, as though through tears. "My whelp husband?"

"Aye. If I am a dog, then he is a whelp." She laughed again, and he smiled at the sound. Something in him told him to reach out to her again, to take her face in his hands, _gently_, and rest his forehead against her own. Her breath was sweet and cool on his lips as she reached up to put her hands on his jaw, his cheek, his lips. He kissed her fingertips as they came to him, looking into her eyes. His composure snapped then and he pushed past them, probably too roughly, and made for her lips, but she twisted just in time and he caught her cheek, his heart sinking heavily as he realized he had missed, pulling his mouth away and resting his forehead on her again. "It is always going to be like this, isn't it?" He rasped, his voice breaking, pulling away from her. She kept her eyes averted as he pushed his chair back and stood before her, curling her hair behind her ear and cupping her cheek again, a wetness trailing onto his thumb as he bent to kiss the top of her head before releasing her from his grip, taking a step back, sighing, and turning to leave. He could hear her whimpering behind him, but as much as he wanted to gather her into his arms, he knew it would be easier on both of them if he walked away.

_Only ever making things worse, aren't you, dog?_

He had gone into the Winter Town and bought two skins of wine then. By the time he had come back the news had been announced to the men about the castle and the cauldrons had come out, all filled with spices and pieces of dried citrus in lieu of fresh fruit, waiting on the casks of wine to be brought out to fill them. It was twilight then, and even through all the wine in his blood there was a different sort of heat there, lingering, laying in wait. In his days as the Hound it had always been there, an undercurrent to his every thought, word and deed: _rage_. He needed to hit something. Desperately.

He had practically begged the boy to taunt him again, to give him a reason to fight, and thankfully the knight had obliged him. But he could not say as much to his Queen, when she asked so sadly what had possessed him, so instead he said "I could not say, Your Grace."

She knew, though. He could see it in her brow; he did not have to tell her. She knew already. He reached out to take her face, trying to bring her against him, trying to hold her, but he found he did not know how to begin.

"Tell me it will not always be like this. Tell me this will get easier, Little Bird, because I..." he shook his head. _She has another man's name. She shares another man's bed. And soon, she will grow great with another man's child. It will always be this way, dog. _"I...I just..._Little Bird, I_—"

She wiped something off his cheek—a drip of the melting snow, though it was too warm. "Shh. I know, Sandor," she stroked his hair, swiping her thumb across his cheek. "I know. But we must not fret about such things. We have our lives and our health. In Winter, that is enough. In Winter, nothing is certain. And Sandor—" she cupped his face with both hands and brought him so close their noses kissed. "_Winter is coming._"


	16. Sansa VII

A/N: This is the last update y'all are like to get until Friday at the earliest. I get to go home for Christmas break on Thursday, but that means flying for like 18 hours. Hopefully there will be outlets so I can write on the plane. Anyway, AN OVERWHELMING NUMBER OF LONG REVIEWS MIGHT CONVINCE ME TO UPDATE TOMORROW.

Just sayin'.

**SANSA**

_Quickening,_ the tree whispered. _Edwyn Hardyng Stark._

"Gods...Quickening?" she breathed. The little one within her moved again, as if to confirm her fear.

_Fear? No, not fear..._ she thought, wrapping her arms about her middle, cradling her son. _My son! Gods, a son, my son! An heir! Oh, Gods..._

Her chest was swelling greater than it had ever swelled before, and suddenly she became keenly aware of the child inside her. How had she not felt him growing before? How had she been so ignorant to his blessing? How had she ever wished _not_ to be with child?! He was a gift—a son—_an heir_. She resisted the urge to throw her arms about the heart tree and kiss the ancient, weathered features in thanks. _Gods of my father and his father before him_, she prayed quickly, her heart racing, giddy and almost giggling, _give us both, my son and me, the strength to start our lives together in the midst of this long Winter. Give me guidance as I bring him up to be the King he must be. Bless him, O Gods, with a mind made to rule and a heart good and true. Bestow upon him the love of all his people, forever and ever, and let his name live through the ages among the noblest of Kings. I thank you, Gods of my fathers, for the blessing of his life, my heir, my son!..._

Sansa burst into tears, her joy was so great. She wrapped her arms around her middle again, stroking her belly, now absurdly impatient to meet him. _Are you proud of me, father? Oh, father...would that you could be here...and you, mother, and Robb, and Arya and Bran and Rickon..._

She had been the last Stark born in winter. While her pack died, she, the lone wolf, had survived. She had ascended her throne for _them_, to honour their memory, to carry out her family's responsibility as defenders and leaders of the North. Following years of annihilating war and rebellion, Sansa had taken her throne in peace. She had focused her efforts on rebuilding the homes and spirits of her people, not one of them untouched by the chaos effected by her father's murder. And now within her growing, a new generation of Starks. A new King in the North. Her son, and Harry's...

Harry. Sansa had come to the Godswood to pray again for the grace to love him...and yet, how could she not? It was Harry's son and heir she carried inside her—what greater duty had a wife than to be a mother?—and for this incredible gift he had given her (_a son...my son!_) her heart was endeared to him.

The Queen stood and swept from her Godswood, flying across the snows and back up into her castle. Any confusions her heart had been afflicted with seemed insignificant now; not absent, but insignificant. Another man had the love she should give to her husband—what of that? Her husband was the father of her child, and she was in no position to will away the love she had for Sandor. _What will be, will be,_ she decided, setting those problems aside. _I am a mother now, and have more pressing things to devote my thoughts to._

She threw open her chamber door and shoved the furs and cloaks from her shoulders. Harry stirred at the noise, making sleepy and vague questioning noises. "Harry! Harry I think I am with child...I felt a quickening in the Godswood!"

"Quickening? I—but—" he reached up and put his palm on her belly, looking into her eyes with sleepy confusion.

Dutifully, the little child kicked again. Harry's eyes grew wide. "Was that..."

Sansa nodded, grinning, tears still drying in her lashes.

"Oh, Sansa!" and he sat up, pulling her into a tight embrace.

"Edwyn Hardyng Stark, the Old Gods told me to name him," she said, drawing back from his embrace to sit on the bed, still smiling. Harry's face fell for a moment before he sighed happily.

"You are right, my Queen. He will be King in the North one day. He needs the Stark name behind him."

"And he will have it," she said, leaning in to kiss her husband, the father of her child, however briefly. "The last Edwyn Stark was a King in the North." _They called him the Spring King. Maybe our son will bring Spring with him too._

"And the next will be King in the North _and_ the Vale..." Harry was beaming. She let him kiss her again, long and deep and sweet, before he broke to sigh happily and rub the sleep from his eyes. "How long until day breaks, my love?"

Sansa turned, sliding off the bed to peek through her window. The stars were low and the night was as dark as it was like to get. "An hour, or close to that."

"At first light we should dispatch riders to find a maester to come and bring our baby. I will not have my wife in the birthing bed without a trained healer looking after her," he said gently, coming up behind her and folding his hands protectively over their son. He slouched to rest his head on her shoulder. "I can see why you spend so much time staring out this window. It really is a beautiful view."

"Mmm," Sansa hummed by way of agreement. The whole beauty of the north was spread out before them, illuminated by the white of the thick, deep snows. Silently they stood, the Queen in the North and her consort, heir to the Vale, and watched as the sky lightened and the sun rose, pink and orange waves cresting and climbing higher into the sky until the first sliver of pale yellow sun peeked over the horizon and the Red Preistess' chanting began.

But the night had been longer than the one preceding it, Sansa could tell. Winter was yet in coming...and maybe sooner than she thought.

"When do you want to announce it to the court?" By court, Harry only could have meant Stannis and Melisandre, and the Knights of the Vale. There was someone else who deserved to be told first, though; Sansa tried to swallow her dread.

The sun was as high as it was like to get when she sent for him. She had paced her solar for close to an hour, letting her nerves work her into a frenzy, trying to figure out the right way to put the news to Sandor. _I hope he takes it better than he took the news of Harry_, she thought fretfully, remembering how callus and hateful he had been, that first afternoon in the throne room. She called for bread and cheese and honeyed milk, and when the page returned with her food she sent him on to fetch her carpenter.

It was nearly half an hour later when Sandor finally appeared, her bread and cheese gone, all her crumbs picked away in an attempt to focus her mind on _anything _but the conversation coming. She stood at her window, looking out into the snow in the yard, a dirty gray now, the sky a matching colour. So engrossed was she in losing herself to an absence of thought that she did not hear him come in.

"You summoned me, Your Grace?" He sounded positively thrilled; Sansa sighed and closed her eyes, a final effort to find the right way to explain. He interrupted. "You look radiant today, if I may say so."

She could not help but smile—what had she to fear? He was Sandor, ever her true, white knight, whether he wanted to be or not. He would find it in his heart to live with this, as he had found it in his heart to live with everything else. She sat him down beside her at her table, nerves still shaking her some. But he took her hand, twisting their fingers together, and her son kicked at his touch.

_Nonsense,_ she thought to herself as she tripped over her introduction, but he rasped "just out with it, Little Bird," and the prince kicked her again, harder than before, still like a fluttering within her.

_Goodness, little one, you are fierce,_ she thought, and then, inconsiderate of his feelings or propriety she took his hand and placed it on her belly. Smoke swirled in his eyes as he pressed it into her, feeling, and her heart skipped a beat. She thought he would pull her into his lap, hold her, caress her, but then her little prince met him in force, slamming his little foot against Sandor's hand as hard as the little beast could. _My boy,_ she thought, nearly with a smile until she saw the heat go from Sandor's eyes and the colour from his face.

She blinked and his chair was on the floor, his long strides closing the distance between her and the door. Panicking she beckoned him back, to ease the pain she had caused him; he returned to her, meeker than she had ever seen him, taking her hand again as he sat down before her, and she clutched it to her, trying to show him however she could that she needed him with her. She had needed him before, when she had yet been a girl, and marriage and a child had not changed the fact of her need.

Yet how could she express such a thing without breaking his heart further? Or hers?

He was lavishing kisses on her palm, her wrist. _This is right,_ Sansa Stark insisted, unbidden, but Sansa Hardyng pulled her hand back. _Not even Harry does this to me,_ she thought at the flush creeping up her neck, the heat twisting in her chest. He was leaning towards her, her face in his hands, his nose brushing up against her cheek. Sansa Stark reached up to stroke his face but Sansa Hardyng made her do so gently, trailing her fingers along his jaw, both cheeks, his lips. She chanced bringing her eyes up to his, so close her eyelashes threatened to brush against his brow. His grey eyes were a summer storm, and the heat of his skin was misting off of him and wrapping her in his warmth. _Gods, he is so _warm_..._ And then he leaned in to kiss her.

Except Sansa Hardyng twisted away.

She let him walk away that time, wet heat trailing from her eyes as he wrenched her heart away with him. _I am a wife. A good wife. I bear my husband's child._ Yet she could not believe that anything about letting her true knight leave her with his eyes all full of twisting pain could be good, wife to another or not.

_Take a moment, take a breath. You have much yet to do, and little day left to do it._

She took a shuddering breath in, wiped the salt from her cheeks and stood, carefully setting the chairs back into their places, and strode from the room. Her son moved within her again and she recalled the strength she had prayed for, for herself and for him. _For all of us. For the whole of the North, and the Vale as well_. She grit her teeth, drew her chin up, straightened her spine, and strode from the room to find her Hand.

"Call all of my knights into the throne room, and the Southron King and his Priestess too. You may fetch me when they have gathered—I will be in my chambers."

"As you command, Your Grace," her great-uncle said, standing from behind his great wooden desk that Sandor had built for him. "May I ask your intentions for this gathering?"

"An announcement, Ser," she said, grinning and taking her great-uncle's hands tenderly. "I am with child, Uncle."

His wizened face broke into a broad smile at that, his eyes the same blue as hers twinkling and shining. "Your kingdoms will rejoice to hear it, Your Grace." He pulled her into an embrace and kissed the top of her hair, whispering, "You remind me so much of your dear mother, Sansa. She would be so proud to see you now."

She could only hug him tighter in response.

When Sansa strode into her throne room with her whole court kneeling about her, the priestess Melisandre caught her eye and winked at her as she bowed her head, confirming Sansa's suspicion that she might know the purpose of the gathering. Stannis, though, looked as surprised as he was ever like to, a little smile twitching on his lips as he nodded in recognition of the news. The knights and men-at-arms had been a chorus of enthusiasm, and Harry begged her to let them have extra wine that night, to celebrate. In a mood to celebrate herself, the Queen ordered cauldrons of wine to be mulled in the yard for the rest of the evening in celebration of the little prince. _Or princess,_ something within her whispered, but though the Old Gods seldom spoke, when they did, they did not lie. It was a son she carried inside her. _Edwyn. Like the Spring King._

Seeing as the wine had been meant to flow in celebration, Sansa had not anticipated to be wrenched from the quiet of her needlework late that night by a cacophonous drunken brawl in the yard. Her mood darkened as she listened to it, growing in volume outside her balcony for several minutes before the Queen had enough. She pulled a cloak over her shoulders, set her jaw, and threw open her doors.

"Stop this madness! I command it!" She had to shriek over the tumult of the brawl, made up of dark padded shapes against the white snow. One particularly large figure—_distinctively_ large figure—dropped to his knee at once, as she had seen him do once before, in the midst of combating his brother at her father's tourney in King's Landing so, so many years before. Her heart fluttered as she watched him sink to his knees, and then crumple in the snow beneath the staggering, drunken, slowly abating brawl.

_Sandor_...her blood chilled. She spun on her heel and strode manically for the yard, nearly shoving pages and maids out of her way as she wove through the endless corridors, frozen night air shocking her lungs as she drew it into her in fitful, livid gasps. "What was the meaning of this?" She demanded, breaking into the scene, some men still tussling with one another, trying to get in one last punch before she caught them.

"'Twere the Hound, Your Grace," one man said, sinking to a knee. "He started it all."

"Where is Lord Clegane? Is he hurt?" _Keep your composure, Sansa, he is a resilient one. _"I would have him brought within. Would three of you be so good as to carry him for me?" The men at arms only blinked at her in response. She sighed harshly. "As you like it. You three," she pointed at the largest three men she saw, "Bring Lord Clegane within. I shall direct you myself."

"But—pardon, Your Grace, but he bit my hand!" Ser Mychel Redfort insisted.

"And he hit Ser Eustace in the _throat_!" Some other knight declared. Sansa rolled her eyes.

"Has the wine deluded you all into thinking this was a forum for debate? Bring that man into the castle _at once_. Your Queen commands it," Harry barked, appearing behind her, a hand at her back. She turned to him, a look of surprise falling upon her features. He gave her a little smile, and turned to lead her back into the castle as the men pulled Sandor up from the snow. He looked truly awful—there was a large cut across his brow and little dribbles of blood all over him, and he seemed to be unconscious. But Harry turned her back towards the castle before she could get a close look at the damage, and whispered to her, "regardless of how they like it, they will do as it please Your Grace, my Queen, the mother of my son," and placed a little kiss on the hollow of her cheek.

"Thank you, Harry," she blushed, drawing up beside an empty bedchamber and beckoning the men, Sandor in tow, inside.

He looked even worse up close. Sansa grabbed a maid and called for wine, a kettle, a bowl and some bandages. "We have no maester, but while I was Alayne Stone I was used to making myself useful to Lord Robert. I will tend his wounds." She knelt before him, unconscious as he was, resisting the urge to smooth his hair away from his face and take her into his arms.

"I will see the soldiers disciplined for their behaviour, Your Grace," Harry said. "Shall I find a chamber for any others needing your attention?"

Sansa frowned. She had not realized tending to Sandor meant, in fairness, tending to any others wounded in the brawl. But she assented, and those in audience left her alone with her true knight.

He smelled strongly of wine, citrus and cloves, and faintly, perhaps, of urine, of blood and sweat. His left eye had swollen shut and the long cut across his brow let long ribbons of brown blood go trailing down his face. His knuckles were torn up too, and the longer she looked at him the more Sansa was convinced that this was all her fault. _He would not have brawled were he not drunk. He would not be drunk if I had not told him I am with child. Oh, Sandor..._ She smoothed his hair away from the cuts on his face, running her fingers through it under the pretence of looking for wounds; it was rife with little tangles and knots, but not without its own sort of silkiness between her fingers. She cleaned up the cuts on his face with a little water the maid had brought her, dabbing at the grime on his face as gently as she could. If she had been bold, she would have stripped him down to his breeches to look for cuts and bruises on his body, but she blushed at the thought, and instead went about peeking beneath his furs to look for any smears of blood from a potentially serious wound. She found none, and it relieved her.

He awoke after the maid had brought her the wine and rags, just as the wine was beginning to boil. She poured it over the rags, laid out in a bowl, and brought them, kneeling, to his side. Awake he looked even worse, and as she waited for the wine to cool he vomited wine-red liquid onto the floor beside him, begging her pardon. _Even drunken, bloody and sick, he still seeks to please you. _She smiled at him and laid a bandage over the cut on his brow.

"_Seven hells_," he cursed. She could not help but laugh again.

"That's more like the Sandor I know," she said, mostly to herself.

Though he was incapacitated and drunk and bleeding, he still appeared to Sansa a paragon of strength and loyalty. He had been among the greatest fighters of the Seven Kingdoms—_he still is,_ she thought admiringly, laying the warm bandages on his face—yet even the Mountain that Rides would have been overwhelmed had he been drunk, unarmed, and attacked by a whole squadron of trained knights. _If my men have fought him once, they will fight him again, and if he struck the first blow as they say—even if he did not—they will hold this night against him. What happens if they are armed next time? And yet, the moment they saw I was watching, they stopped...I must be the key to his safety._

She knew then that she had been wrong to put him in her forge, to keep him away from her; now that her men had tasted his blood, they would come back for more, and with the heir to the kingdom within her, Sansa knew she could not afford to gamble with (and worry about) his safety, or hers. She would put him in her Queensguard, keep him in her sight as much as she could...and should it not be a brother of her Queensguard tasked with fortifying her greatest weakness, her castle? She had been foolish, she realized, selfish and faithless. How could she keep him safe if she could not _see_ that he was so? And it was as Harry had said—regardless of how her men liked it, they would do as it pleased her. Eventually they would have to accept him as their brother, and the time was as ripe as it ever would be.

He had reached out to her face, sighing, almost whining to himself. "Tell me it will not always be like this. Tell me this will get easier, Little Bird, because I..."and he began to sputter, searching for his words as his eyes glistened in the firelight. She knew what he meant to say, though; Sansa ran her fingers through his hair again, wiping the wetness leaking onto his cheeks from beneath his eyes, and whispered to him something her father used to say to her when she, as a child, had despaired over something. It had not been a comfort to her then, but she was wiser now. "In winter, nothing is certain. And Sandor, Winter is coming."

Though he had insisted he was fine to walk to his chambers in the forge, Sansa insisted that he stay in the chamber for the night, helping him into the bed herself and tucking in the quilts and furs about him. She swept a lock of his hair away from his cut and, when she was quite sure he was too tranquil to react, kissed it very lightly. He sighed heavily, a little smile on his face, and rasped, "will you sing me a lullaby, Little Bird? That hymn that you sang me...that night..." Sansa could not help but smile, her heart flooded with a rush of affection. She reached to take his hand and began to sing:

_Gentle Mother, font of mercy,__  
__Save our sons from war, we pray.__  
__Stay the swords and stay the arrows,__  
__Let them know a better day.__  
__Gentle Mother, strength of women,__  
__Help our daughters through this fray.__  
__Soothe the wrath and tame the fury,__  
__Teach us all a kinder way._

He had let his eyes close as she sang to him, softly and softer still, until his breathing shifted deep within his chest and the most peaceful expression came over his face. He was beautiful, she realized, looking upon him at such peace. As he slept there was no hurt, no rage, no spite in the lines of his face. His mouth fell open just a bit as he slept, and Sansa, suddenly indulgent, swept her hair over one shoulder and grabbed it up tight, leaned very carefully over him, and ghosted a kiss upon his lips for just a moment, breathing in his scent, feeling the warmth of his skin, before she swallowed her heart and pulled herself to her duty, stood from his bed, and left the room.

"Are there any more wounded from the brawling that require my attention?" Sansa asked, folding her hands before her. The pages informed her that there were none, which only confirmed her fear that all those involved only sought to land their hits on Sandor. She clamped down on her anger and turned it into resolve, and went to speak to Harry and Ser Brynden about Sandor's appointment. _Regardless of how they like it,_ _they will do as it please Your Grace, my Queen, the mother of my son, _Harry had said. _I hope he does not feel as though he is eating his words..._

Once they were convinced, Sansa found in herself a sort of disquieted peace. Harry had been reluctant, shaking his head and raising his eyebrows as he drew in a sigh, just before capitulating. Ser Brynden had been worried over the politics of it all, but the Queen was insistent. Harry made love to her that night, as if to prove to himself that she was really his, but Sansa's thoughts had been elsewhere as she cast sidelong glances out the windows into the black, black night. She could only hope that her men were as bent to her will as she hoped they were, and that Sandor would be safer by her side.

_Winter is coming_, the black, black night seemed to say.


	17. Sandor VII

A/N: I'm back! Miss me? Tell me so in the comments!

**SANDOR**

Three days later his bliss was done with. Out of the castle and back in his forge he went, no longer hurt enough for either of them to pretend he still needed her care. His bruises had gone from purple to a sickly green and the gash in his forehead had scabbed and scaled. _Even uglier than usual, dog,_ he thought to himself disdainfully, _no wonder she sent you out of the castle._

He spent the better part of the next week working out which of the tools left in the forge could help him repair the portcullis, and how. As much as he knew it would probably ease his work, he could not bring himself to stoke fires to soften the metal, and so he pounded it out gently, using a large rusted hammer to put it back to what he hoped had been its original shape. Setting it back on its chains, he found it worked well enough. _Come spring, we will get it replaced proper. Just like everything else around here._

It had been seven days since he had last seen her, smelled her hair, felt her fingers on his brow, when the coarse little man appeared in the doorway of his forge, smiling, with a little ball of twine.

"My _measurements?!_ What in seven buggering hells do _you_ want with my _measurements?_"

"Her Grace sent me herself, ser," he said in a thick northern accent.

"I'm no bloody—did you say _Her Grace_ sent you?"

"Aye, ser."

"For a new suit of armour?"

"Aye, ser." The armourer sounded nearly as confused as Sandor was.

_Maybe she wants to give you a gift, dog. Be grateful._ He blinked at the little man, still waiting, still smiling, twine in hand.

"...Well, get on with it then."

A week later Sandor was still wondering what the armourer had been on about—he had seen the Little Bird twice in the interim, and she had said nothing about it. He wondered why he was waiting for her to mention it—not wanting to offend her goodwill, perhaps—but the minute the armourer delivered his new gray and white armour, bright and splendid and _regal,_ he knew he should have. Sandor was not fond of surprises, even ones that left him a grinning idiot.

She had given him a uniform, complete with a white cloak.

"She bids you try it on, ser. She said she will be waiting for you in her solar, and to come up once you are dressed."

"Thank you, my lord," Sandor said, cradling a piece of plate in his fingertips. She had commissioned new mail for him as well, and a new tunic and breeches to wear underneath, all thick soft wool. There was something so _Sansa_ about it all—the little designs in white enamel on the plate, perhaps, or the softness of the wool underclothes, or even the glimmering brightness of the new mail—yet when he put it all on he felt like a man again. A whim struck him to run a comb through his hair and he obeyed it, wrestling with his hair for what felt like an eternity. He went to the trouble of lathering and shaving his good cheek and running a wet cloth all over his body, feeling that there was a sort of formality about the event of presenting himself to his Queen for the first time in his Queensguard armour.

When he finally unfolded the white cloak to pin it up on his shoulders, he frowned, realizing it was not new at all. Had she given him some other man's cloak? Was he just a replacement for some green boy who had gotten himself killed like an idiot? It had been cleaned, surely, but there were bloodstains and mudstains, sootstains too...but her Queensguard had seen no fighting as of yet, had they? And the cloak was _long_, longer than any other man had a height to wear...

He _knew_ this cloak.

_Has she kept it this whole time?_

His heart seemed to float at the realization that despite all her running hither and thither, losing everything she had once loved, the Little Bird had kept the cloak he left with her after fleeing the Blackwater. It was a queer feeling, one he knew little of. _She has thought of you, dog. She must have done._ He almost wanted to cry for a moment before growling at the sentiment and pinning the cloak up on his shoulders roughly.

Even through the plate and the wool, the dark winter afternoon bit him to the bone as he strode from his forge into the castle, hopefully for the last time. _You got what you wanted, dog. Now you can hover over her while she eats and sleeps and rules. Are you happy now?_

He was. He had to be.

"I regret to have kept you waiting, Your Grace," he said by way of announcing his appearance in her solar. She had been writing something, and looked up at him quickly, her face breaking into a smile as she stood to greet him.

"Oh, Sandor, look at how handsome you are!" She gushed, pacing lithely forward. He could not suppress the blushing smile that came over him when his Little Bird called him 'handsome,' as embarrassed as he was to be blushing. "I forgot how much I liked you in white."

"Thank you for the gift of the armour, Your Grace. I think it rather suits me," he said to the floor.

"Of course it does, Sandor. Do you like it? Does it feel right? I must admit I know very little about commissioning armour..." She stepped very close to him, studying the enamelwork on a piece of his plate. He could smell some floral oil on her neck.

He glanced into her eyes then, a brilliant light in them. "Of course I like it, My Queen. I like it, and everything that comes with it," he whispered, brushing a piece of hair away from her face. She was smiling, standing before him, stroking a piece of his arm plate with her long white fingers...

Suddenly a weight settled over his heart as he wished the armour, the mail, the tunic, all of it gone, and thought of what her fingers would feel like stroking his arm. Looking upon her face, he fought to keep his eyes from trailing down her jaw, her neck, and disappearing over her neckline, picturing what artful perfection she kept hidden beneath all her wool and satin. And _gods_ how soft she would be, her whole body like down and silk, all of it creamy white except where he would make her flush...

_This is how it is always going to be, isn't it?_ He asked, and she had nodded. Little Bird or not, she was another man's wife, and yet here she was, standing _thisclose_ to him. He wondered for a moment if she was not as virtuous and pure as he imagined her to be in his fantasies, if there was a part of her that was wild and wanton, heedless of propriety, that he might have. _Would she be as sweet, if she were? Is it not her chastity that makes her so sweet?_

But then she was across the room again. "I will appoint you officially on the morrow, but I wanted to give you a night to move your things into your new chambers. You will still be in charge of the fortifications of the castle—I figured that should be a duty of a brother of my Queensguard anyway, should it not?"

"I suppose, Your Grace." _Cool your blood, dog. She is not for you_. For some reason once his thoughts had turned from propriety he could not seem to right them—he thought about her long legs wrapped around him, her palms flat on his chest. _Check yourself, dog, check yourself! She is with another man's child—remember that._ But then he thought about how beautiful she would be, her belly taut and round with _his_ son, singing lullabies to both of them as he stroked her roundness and fell asleep with her in his arms.

It was madness.

"Sandor, are you alright?"

"Sorry, Your Grace. I...lost my focus for a moment."

"I asked you if you wanted a cup of wine...you did not answer me, so I knew something was amiss." She chuckled. "I suppose you need not answer, though. I already know you do."

_How right you are, Little Bird._

And he knocked down the sour red and tried to forget where his thoughts had been, cup after cup, until she stopped him on the grounds of keeping his head from pounding during his appointment ceremony. The whole night he ached with sobriety, wishing he could give himself over to his lascivious thoughts without acknowledging the impossibility of them all.

Yet Sandor only found in the weeks proceeding that his thoughts became harder and harder to control. Since his appointment she had kept him at her immediate side nearly every minute of every day, save the hour she allotted him in the training yard and the additional hour he was to make fortification arrangements. He stood outside her door while she slept, returned to her side after his hours in the yard, stood behind her as she supped and drank and scribbled on little pieces of parchment late into the evening. Sometimes she bid him eat with her, or drink, or simply sit and converse with her as she did her needlework. It was maddening. The longer he was in her exclusive presence, the worse it got. And he could _swear_ the dresses she wore were less chaste in his presence, that he caught her leering at him on more than one occasion (which had made his breeches uncomfortably tight) and once, when he found the Little Bird in her cups, she had commanded him to let her sit on his lap and hold her, which he had more than happily obliged, yet all the while a resentment smouldered within him. He was second to Harry, always second to Harry, for her affection. When he bid her goodnight for the evening, it was Harry's side she slept against, in a bed _he_ had made for her. It was all wrong. She was _his _Little Bird.

Eventually he got it in his mind that she was toying with him. She had to know the effect on him—she was not the stupid Little Bird she had once been, and Sandor was hardly subtle about his..._sentiments_—and she must have enjoyed watching him writhe, otherwise she would have stopped teasing him long ago. _That is ridiculous, and you know it,_ a little voice within him insisted chidingly. But he looked at her and he knew, with a sinking feeling, that she was meaning to hurt him. He did not want to believe it, but how could he not?—it was so torturously evident. _This is your penance, dog. For your sins. This is how it is always going to be._ Yet it made him irate.

One night, as she bid him sit with her while she sewed, it broke him. He refused.

"Pardon, my lord?" She said, obviously confused, looking up at him with those big, beautiful blue eyes, batting her eyelashes. It made him sick.

"I said no, Your Grace. I will guard your chambers from without."

"Have I said something to upset you, my lord?" She called after him as he had turned. _Oh, she is good_, he thought at the confusion in her tone of voice, so nearly genuine. He spun on his heel, unable to look upon her face.

"No, Your Grace. I would just prefer to guard you without."

"You are lying to me," she whispered, incredulous. "Why are you lying to me, Sandor?"

A growl rose in his throat. "I suppose you would have the truth of it, then? Yes. You have done many things to upset me."

She was quiet for a long moment. Heaviness settled over his heart anew, and he glanced, suddenly brave, at her face. She had set her jaw and flared her nostrils, but her eyes were sad. "I assume," she began, her throat sounding dry, "you will be so good as to tell me _what_ I could have _possibly done_ to upset you so, my lord?"

That was it. That was all he could take. A wildness broke from within him, and he strode forward, squatting down before her and taking a wrist in his hand. She whimpered, but her face betrayed no fear. "Aye, Little Bird, I'll tell you. You," he said accusingly, keeping his voice low, "are toying with me. Yes—toying with me. You know how I...how I _feel_, about you, Little Bird, my Little Bird, and yet, you...you _torture _me—don't you deny it, you know you do. You let me get _this close_," he said, demonstrating, yanking her into his arms, his cheek brushing against her cheek. She breathed in sharply, struggling in his arms, but still looked unafraid. He took her face in his palm, probably roughly, and gripped her jaw. "So close I can already taste you on my lips, and then," and he tossed her face away, standing up and pacing back from her. "Cast me away, like I disgust you. Do I disgust you, Little Bi—" But she had stood from where she had crumpled as he let her go, strode to where he stood, and slapped him _hard_, harder than she should have been able to, and he keeled back in shock.

"How _dare_ you," she whispered, her voice quivering with rage, a danger in it unlike anything he had ever heard. Remorse washed over him like a bucket of ice water. _What have I done?_ "How _dare_ you speak such vicious untruths to me. _I _am toying with you? With_ you_? Before you came along I was almost happy in my marriage. Almost. I got word you were dead, and that helped me start to _let go_ of you. How am I supposed to _let go of you_ when you are _standing right here_?! Oh, Sandor, I..." She grabbed his face just as roughly as he must have grabbed hers, her sharp little fingernails digging into his skin. "_Look _at your Queen when she is_ speaking _to you. I have loved you since you gave me this cloak for the first time in court at King's Landing. I have regretted not fleeing with you on the night of the Blackwater nearly every day since. Four years, I waited, hoping that somehow you would appear and give me another chance to rectify my mistake. And yet _now_ you appear, once I am so far alienated from any semblance of freedom I ever had that I can hardly _look_ at you the way I want to without feeling guilt. And _I _am toying with _you?_"

She stood there, shaking, his jaw gripped in her hand as he knelt before her. There were tears streaming down her face and burning in his own eyes. He felt the familiar crush of reality, quite absent since his time on the Quiet Isle, come over him—of course she loved him. She loved him just as he loved her. But there was nothing either one of them could do differently to make their situation any better.

"F-f-forgive me, Your Grace, I..." he sighed harshly, trying to force back his tears, but they came anyway.

"I have a duty to my Kingdom now, and to my husband, and to my child. If you had just come to the Eyrie and gotten me..." her voice was breaking with a sob.

"I got _so_ close, Little Bird, I did," he insisted, wrapping his arms around her hips to draw her against him so he could hide his grief. "I was on my way when a couple of Gregor's men wounded me in a fight. I nearly died." She was stroking his hair and he pressed his face into her gown, still fighting the tears that came to his cheeks unbidden. She twisted her fingers up in it, scratching his scalp gently, before sighing.

"Damn it, Sandor," she groaned and then her body was gone from his face.

And she was kissing him.

Her lips... he could hardly think as he put his hands on her waist and pulled her to him, more gently than he thought he would have been capable of. Her lips were velvet and sweet and hot and _right_, so right, her hands on either side of his face, holding her to him. He moaned and she gasped beneath him, his tongue brushing ever-so-lightly, tracing her bottom lip, and..._Seven save me_...she parted her mouth for him. He was not sure how long they knelt there, wrapped in one another's embrace, lips locked, pouring themselves into the other. Sandor lost track of where he ended and his Little Bird began—her hair was his hair, her arms his arms, her waist his waist, and yet somehow he kept himself tamed. His hands roamed feather-light over her gowns, keeping to parts of her he might hold in a dance. He did not nibble at her like he wanted to, suckle her earlobe nor trail kisses down her neck. This was a stolen kiss, he knew, and he wanted to make the most of it while he had it.

Too soon, much too soon, her kiss slipped away from him as she dropped her head to his shoulder, slamming her little fist into his breastplate in anguish. He stroked her hair and kissed the top of her head, holding her close. She had taken to sobbing uncontrollably, and yet something inside of him was soaring with happiness. Whimpering into his shoulder she cried mutterings of guilt and duty and appeals to the gods for things to be _different_, but Sandor could no more than half-listen. He would find some way to content himself with that solitary, stolen kiss for the rest of his life. He had to. He knew he could.

Later that night in his chambers he carefully memorized it, piecing the whole thing together from heady, larger-than-life snippets of detail until it was carved on the surface of his heart. He would return to it whenever he could, while he stood guard in an empty, quiet chamber, or as he measured the paces between fractured spits of castle wall. Whenever he caught her eye he would think of it, think of her love, but he would not let himself wish he were any more fortunate than he already was. Dogs like him hardly deserved the attention of women so beautiful and fine. He knew he could not do right by her, if he had her for true. The fact of her love and her stolen kiss was more than he deserved, and as much as he could ever hope for.

He repeated these thoughts whenever he could, convincing himself they were true. He was in the midst of such meditative repetition when one of his white brothers beckoned him to the dungeons, on some urgent business concerning their prisoner Lady Walda and her child.

"Her Grace has positioned me here without her chambers. I will not move until Her Grace tells me so."

"Please, Ser. You are the only brother strong enough to move her," the little boy of a knight pleaded. Sandor sighed.

"Buggering hells. Alright boy. You stand here and guard Her Grace, I will find my own way to the dungeons."

"It is rather a complicated way, Ser. Do let me show you."

"Piss on your Sers, I'm no knight," he spat, following the boy out of the corridor.

"Right you are, Hound," the knight smirked and whispered.

And then there was a wet cloth pulled taut over his mouth. He took a sharp breath in to scream but the world went black before he could.


	18. Sansa VIII

A/N: Don't worry guys. It's a double-update.

**SANSA**

_Gods, no, no please, Gods, NO!_

The Queen in the North dragged her ankles through the snow, cloak billowing behind her in the strength of the midnight Winter wind. Cold soaked her to the bone as she collapsed before the heart tree, her lashes frozen with the moisture of her tears; her thoughts ran in a loop as she knit her fingers together, knuckles white as she poured all her strength into the prayer, her voice broken with grief.

"_Please,_ Gods of my father and his father before him," she unclasped her hands to bite down on her right, trying to swallow the sobs that racked her. They would kill her out here, in this storm, in this cold. "Let this be a fever dream, Gods, a nightmare, as terrible as it is untrue, because I..." A thought and a sob cut her off midsentence—_Edwyn...Gods, my son!_

She took a shuddering breath in and continued. "If it is not, Gods, give me the strength and grace to face this as a Queen should. I used what strength I had to face the deaths of my father and mother and sister and brothers..." and whatever progress towards composure she had made dissipated. She turned to shrieking. "Please, Gods...let me _keep __**him**_, at least!"

She shivered and drew her cloak closer around her, rocking back and forth—it was too thin for this weather, her marriage-cloak, white and red checked wool that might have suited in the Eyrie. She needed furs and pelts. She needed his _arms_, big and strong, to carry her through this. "Gods! I cannot _**lose**__ him_!" She cried out, throwing herself into the snow before her, beating her little hands against the ground, the ice nicking, slicing her skin. She could not bring herself to care. Her soul had wailing to do.

Yet she was Queen in the North, and a Queen does not wail.

_Wipe your tears before they kill you—_it was her brother's voice, Bran's voice—_take deep breaths, Sansa, and think._

She did as the heart tree bid her, taking a long, shaky breath in through her nose and palming her tears off her cheeks. _Feel the cold and let it calm you. You have the strength to face this. Nothing will ever be worse than father._

Sansa bit down on her lip and drew her cloak around her face, getting herself as small as she could. As much as she had wanted to throttle Ser Eustace upon his report, choking on his own blubbering sobs, Sansa knew for the sake of her dignity she needed to remove herself and regain her composure before making any sudden moves in her fury. _My skin has turned to porcelain, to ivory, to steel._

Just an hour before she had been enjoying an afternoon like any other—the waning light of the day had streamed lazily in through her chamber window and spilled upon the parchments she studied, worrying affairs, concerned with dwindling rations. _And winter is coming,_ she thought, looking out into the sky, yellow with the low-hanging sun, a dark storm hinting, swirling in the east. Sandor stood guard without—just two weeks before she might have asked him in to sit with her, just so that she could hear his breathing and feel him stir the air, to have him close. Yet once she had kissed him all the intensity of her confusing emotions transformed into a crippling guilt; how easy it had been to submit any illusions of being an honourable wife and Queen to the fire of his cold, passionate fury. Nothing had ever felt so right as his lips on hers, his kiss as delicate as his touch had been the day he had dabbed at her split lip the first time Joffrey had her beaten. _This is where I belong_, she knew as he slipped his arms around her, and yet still her mother's words came to her, a haunting chant, a condemnation—_family, duty, honour_—and she was filled with self-loathing as she realized she was forsaking all three. And more conflicting still, she had worried so that he would want more from her now—that she would find herself backed into corners, unable to resist the stormy passion in his eyes, the deep rasp of his voice as he called her _Little Bird,_ making her shiver with wanton longing—and yet he had surprised her in his apparent restraint. If anything, Sandor seemed happier just to be near her, a sort of twinkle in his eyes that was all new.

_But this changes everything._

Ser Eustace had burst in, unannounced and panting, giving Sansa a start so violent it seemed likely to kill her. "Your Grace...My Lady...A tragedy...We never meant..." Sandor had not joined him in the entryway, though, and her thoughts turned to him. _Where could he have gotten to?_

"Where is Lord Clegane?" Sansa interrupted. Ser Eustace blinked at her, gulping strong with his eyes wild before straightening himself and running a hand nervously through his hair.

"In the dungeons, Your Grace."

"_Why_ is he in the _dungeons_?"

Ser Eustace only shuffled his feet, subjecting the ground to his frantic, worried staring.

"Ser Eustace, _why is Lord Clegane in the dungeons?_"

"We brought him down, Your Grace," he said carefully, still staring at the floor.

"He came _willingly?_" It was very unlike Sandor to leave his post. She filled up with dread beneath her authoritative, fierce exterior.

"...No, Your Grace."

"How did you get him down there, then? I heard no struggle."

He sighed. "We used a maester's sleeping waft, Your Grace, but—"

"What were your _intentions_, Ser," she spat, incredulous and livid, "in _drugging_ my personal _guard,_ a sworn _brother_ of yours—"

"Foul play, Your Grace, I admit, but it's gone all the fouler!" He sunk to his knees. The knight was _sobbing_. "I never meant to hurt him, Your Grace, I promise...I only wanted to prove my loyalty..."

She let the boy sob, rage and confusion swirling around her like the dark storm falling over her castle. Soft, measured footsteps grew louder from without until he appeared in the doorway, his face twisted and grave, and her heart seemed to stop as he knelt before her, laying the corpse of the man that loved her at her feet.


	19. Sandor VIII

**SANDOR**

Lungs tight and eyes clouded with fog, lids heavy and sticky, whole body numb. The scream that stuck before blacking out came again, a whimpering groan.

"Shit, is he coming to already?"

"Quick, give him some more."

"That was the last of it. Considering the size of him, we should be thankful we had him out this long."

Three different speakers, at least. Something coarse against his wrists, like rope. Dark everywhere. Could not buggering _see_. Another groan, stronger and true.

"How about adding more to the draught, then?"

"More Foxglove?"

"Aye."

"Don't want to kill him."

"Make him _sick_, though. Make him pay."

Twisting his wrists, a knot. _Quiet as you worry, dog_. Fingertips poked and prodded, learning, picturing, figuring. A soft light, orange. Six faces and a gleaming thing. A cup. Chalice.

_What in seven hells..._

Little pink things, flowers maybe, dropped into the goblet by twelve menacing hands.

His fingers found an end in the knot. He pushed it up, and it gave. _Bloody green fools._

A rush of warm orange light; a slight man with a torch, pale skin, hair and eyes, coloured by the fire. "Hunter, Redfort, Belmore—what is the meaning of my summons?"

"We have the Hound, my liege."

A pause. "I see that. He looks worse for the wear. Why, pray tell? Has he done something?"

"Has he done something?!" A cruel laugh. "What has he _not_ done, rather?"

"A Lannister dog, nurse to their bastard. Mad dog of Saltpans."

"He _bit_ me!"

"And my wife, _your Queen_, forgave him his misdeeds, whatever they might be. I repeat: why is Lord Clegane tied up?!" He sounded like he already knew, though, ire thick in his voice.

One knight picked up the gleaming cup with the pink flowers in it. "Going to make the dog howl, my liege."

"Thought you might want to watch—"

"—considering the way he looks at your _wife_ and all."

"We are _your_ men, My Lord. He has no right—"

"He has _every _right!" Harry shouted, filling the small dungeon corridor with a new strength in his voice. "He is your _sworn brother_. He is your equal and _your_ better," he said pointedly, jabbing one of the boys in the chest. "Her Grace trusts him with her life, and therefore so do I. She has made it _expressly_ clear that harming him is _treason_, Sers, and so—" he snatched the chalice from the stunned knight before him. "If this thrice-damned draught is good enough for a member of her Queensguard, then it is good enough for her husband!"

And before anyone could stop him, Harrold Hardyng knocked the contents of the chalice back into his throat, swallowed, wiped his mouth, and tossed the cup aside in the corridor, its clattering loud enough to rattle one's teeth in the otherwise grave silence. A long moment, as long as a minute perhaps, passed as the King Consort stood panting, sweating, his eyes as sharp as Boltons' blades as he regarded each of the knights before him with mounting contempt, their faces all broken with dread or horror or both. As quietly as he could, Sandor slipped the bonds from his wrists, moving to see if he was bound anywhere else. He was not.

And then Harrold Hardyng fainted.

It was sudden. His breathing hitched and a hand fluttered to his chest, and though he tried to keep his face screwed up in his dignified and self-righteous anger, his legs went out from under him and he fell to the floor. Some of his knights rushed to him, others just stared at each other with mounting terror in their eyes. Sandor rocked forward onto his hands and knees and crawled to the man. _Whatever he drank, it was meant for you, dog. _"Out of the way," he barked, throwing the knights aside as he pulled the Little Bird's husband into his lap, his big fingers probing for a pulse. It was slow, and weak, and slower.

The King Consort's eyes were open but unfocused, and a tremor ran through him that quickly turned into a violent convulsion. Sandor tried to hold him still, tried to keep him from hitting his head on the stones and hurting himself. He must have bit his tongue as a froth of blood, far too bright in colour, oozed from between his lips, the same that kissed the Little Bird goodnight and good morning. Sandor tilted him on his side in hopes that he would not choke on his own blood, and a trickle of sick leaked forth from his mouth as well. The knights were in a panic now, and fighting amongst themselves.

"Someone should get the Queen."

"You can count _me _out of that one."

"It was _your _idea to drug him!"

"Aye, to _drug_ the _Hound_, not to _poison_ our _liege!"_

"Will you little girls be _quiet? _The man is _dying_—you, run for a healer," he pointed at one of the boy-knights at random, "and _you_, go tell your Queen of this..._folly_," he spat. Sandor had never spoken a word with such disgust in his life. The knights skittered off and the remaining held their tongues. Sandor smoothed the fine blonde hair away from Harry's sweating brow as he stilled. "You'll be alright, My Lord, you will," Sandor cooed, trying to sound reassuring. _This was to be you, dog. Look what the whelp went and took for you._

Harry took a rattling, shallow breath. "Tell...S-S-Sansa...l...lo...v..." he choked, wheezing and bleeding.

"You will tell her yourself, Harry. Try not to exhaust yourself. You will be alright." But Sandor's heart sank at the lie of it all; Harry's pulse was impossibly slow now.

And then the light went from his eyes.

_He did it not for you, dog,_ he told himself, scooping him up into his arms and standing, looming over the boys left in the corridor. "I hope you all feel proud...and _loyal,_ is that the right of it, Ser?" Sandor spat at their feet and turned to make his way up into the castle, to the Queen, the dead man's wife. He weighed nothing in his arms, limp and drooping, his face all covered in sweat and blood and vomit, yet Sandor found looking down on his face as he carried him through a pool of sunlight there was something holy or saint-like to the quality of his expression. He understood it completely.

_He did it for her._


	20. Sandor IX

A/N: Sorry I missed yesterday's update you guys. I saw my best friend for the first time in six months. I hope you weren't too disappointed—remember to leave a review!

**SANDOR**

The Little Bird had flown away to her Godswood not long after he had appeared, all the pretty colour fled from her lips and cheeks, improperly dressed for the weather. If she was not back shortly, he would go after her. There was a dark sort of storm brewing outside. _Winter is coming_, he thought.

There were no silent sisters in the castle to look after Hardyng, so Sandor called in some serving girls to have him washed and readied for his funeral rites. _He will need a coffin,_ Sandor thought to himself,_ you owe him at least that much_.

The Little Bird had been out in the cold long enough, he decided worriedly, and bit the inside of his good cheek to keep himself from shivering as he ventured out into the Godswood to fetch her. Night was falling fast, hovering over them on wings of charcoal wind, flakes of water colder than ice aggressive and abrasive as he pushed through the weather to her. _She must be frozen,_ he thought, beginning to worry, _I hope she hasn't gone and caught her death in her grieving._ But it was warmer than he expected it to be in the Godswood, heat billowing off the hot spring pool in thick white tendrils slouching west with the wind. The Little Bird had curled herself up into a little ball on the roots of the weirwood, still as stone. Without announcing himself or asking permission he peeled her up off the forest floor, pulling her up into his arms and under his cloak, neither of them saying a word, and carried her back into the warmth of the castle.

Once the force of the wind was gone he became aware of her shivering beneath his furs, clutching him desperately, little sobs rattling her teeth like whispers. Her husband was gone from her solar by the time he returned her there, pulling his cloaks and furs from his shoulders and wrapping her in them by the fire. Her hair was wet and her skin was red with the aggression of the cold. "Bring Her Grace some hot mulled wine," he barked at the nearest page, taking a moment to warm his hands by the blazing hearth before placing them on her cheeks, warmer than he had worried they would be. She gave him a small smile.

"I would prefer a cup of warm honeyed milk," she said quietly to the page, more calmly than he would have thought she would manage. He heard the page leave the room from behind them and she deflated, her composure fracturing, all honesty before him. The redness in her face must not have all been from the cold, he realized, chest heavy with sympathy. He put his hands on her shoulders while she leaned over to hold her own face in her hands, breathing deeply and slowly, trying to control herself, something about the silence sacred and tenuous.

Even after her milk was brought to her and she sipped at it gingerly, the quiet persisted. He was crouching before her, looking up at her beauty, not touching her at all; she had a good reputation to maintain, after all, and he was not about to soil that image of her with his affections, as freely as he yearned to give them. Instead he waited patiently for a moment alone and some stability evident in her expression and took her chin in his fingers gently and drew a breath to speak, but once their eyes met and knit their gaze together he realized he had no words for her at all, no comforts, condolences, no wisdom for her weary heart. So with a broken rasp, he cut to the quick of it.

"I have to do something for him."

She nodded as he stood, curling her hands further around her little cup. Leaving her there in his furs, he ground his teeth against the cold as he made his way back to the old forge, dark and cold with the lack of fire within. He moved quick with sombre resolve as he built a low fire for the light, removed his armour and found good thick planks of straight white pine to make up the coffin, the form of it emerging in the wood, growing out of his strong, sure hands as he guided them to the right shape with a practiced sort of finesse, letting his thoughts wander as he built.

The poor Little Bird was trying so hard to be strong, all deep breaths and rigid postures, but it would wear her down, he worried. He had seen this side of her before. He had watched its birth in King's Landing, the careful, measured lady, all armoured in her courtesy. It would do her more good now than it ever had then, he thought; she had perfected it over the years, grown it into her skin. Those years before he had resented her courtesy because it had all seemed mummery, a poorly masked charade, but she had learned to wear it with honesty since then. It was an admirable trait now, very Queenly of her.

Sandor wondered, cutting careful angles in the shoulders of the coffin, what she would do with the boys who had plotted to drug him, whose maliciousness had killed her husband, their liege. Would she do for them as she had for Roose Bolton, all by herself? He hoped she would not—the memory of it still made him squirm—but she would not have done such a think if had not been important to her, he told himself. But would she not want her vengeance? The boys had killed her husband, after all...

Then his thoughts turned to Hardyng, slip of a boy as he had been. Sandor Clegane was not one to admit when he was wrong—excepting those special situations wherein a lack of admission would multiply the scale of how wrong he was—but in that moment, as he shaped the coffin for the man who had saved his life, Sandor willingly acknowledged that he had completely misjudged the man. As he laid the corpse of Harrold Hardyng at his wife's feet, whatever made him _him_ spent and fled, it occurred to him that his gesture was truly noble, not for what the boy had done for Sandor, but what he had done for Sansa. How deeply he must have cared for her to defend her will and her word with his final act, even as it meant defending him by proxy, a great ugly lout the boy had open disdain for. It was honourable, well and truly honourable...the sort of honour her father might have once been capable of, while still in possession of his head. He was not even loath to admit, he found as he built, that the boy had been exactly what the Little Bird had needed, right when she had needed it. He was kind to her, supportive, respectful and yielding to her power as Queen. He had given her back her Kingdom, something Sandor never would have been able to do, and protected her as she needed protecting, in ways she could not protect herself. He was filled up with a new reverence for the lad, and regretted that he had not been man enough to recognize it about him while he had lived.

And so he made up for it the only way he knew how: he embellished the corners of the coffin with four-cord twining plaits and made for the lid a tessellating diamond-shaped pattern out of the direwolves of house Stark, using a stain he had bought made from weirwood sap to colour the space between the wolves red in a chequered pattern copied from the Little Bird's bride cloak. He worked all through the long night and well into the next day until the piece was finished, and for a moment he was proud to look upon it, until he remembered why he had put such effort into it. It was worthy of a King Consort, he thought—the Little Bird's husband, the man who had saved his life.

"It is beautiful, Sandor," she had said breathlessly, quiet, dutiful tears on her cheeks as she squeezed his hand during the funeral. "Thank you."

"My pleasure, Your Grace," he had said, and as much as he was glad of her gratitude, he had not built beautifully it for her. He built it beautifully for Harrold Hardyng, for looking after his Little Bird so well.

It made him nervous, though, how she cleaved to him throughout the funeral, holding his arm as she walked in, clutching his hand throughout the service, not relinquishing her grip on him for more than a moment the whole evening through all of the public engagements. There was something privately right about it, as though they both recognized that it was Sandor she wanted and needed, but she was freshly widowed and he was a member of her Queensguard. Never before had Sandor been concerned with propriety and yet he felt he had to, now that she seemingly was not. He walked her to her chamber, kissed her chastely on her knuckles, and bid her goodnight tenderly, all the while keeping a respectful distance; she had seemed well enough composed.

Several hours later though, a sinking feeling and a knock on his chamber door told him he was wrong. A page was without; he was summoned to guard her chambers.

"She insists, Ser. Milord. She cannot sleep without you at the door."

_Poor Little Bird is mad with grief._ His mail and plate was heavy as he strapped it on.

Her chambers were not far. He tapped the brother on duty on his shoulder and traded places with him, and once the knight was gone he knocked with a single knuckle on the Little Bird's chamber door. No sobs could he hear, but the sporadic, slurping inhalations of a woman trying to control herself, and sure enough when he opened the door he spied her at her window, awash in the moonlight reflected off the snow, jaw set, eyes red, chest shuddering and heaving, trying so hard to keep still. He cleared his throat, but she did not look over.

"I wanted you to know that I have taken over Ser Waynwood's post tonight, as it please Your Grace."

Her bottom lip quivered and her body was racked by another sob that she tried to stifle. Before he could think his instincts took over and he was shutting the chamber door behind him, crossing the room to her, her pain impossible for him to tolerate without doing _something_ to soothe her. She rushed headlong onto his chest, letting her sobs go, strangled, choking little things that they were, and held him tighter than she should have been able to. Slowly he tightened his own grip around her, his heart heavy with borrowed grief, as if he had taken some of her pain upon himself to lighten her load. Would that he could.

"Hold me, Sandor," she squeaked between sobs.

"I am, Little Bird. Not going anywhere." But she wriggled out of his arms.

"Take off your armour," she commanded, crossing her arms, her face red and contorted with pain. "Your mail too. I need to be able to feel you."

A lump overtook his throat. _She needs to feel me?_ "As Your Grace commands."

Yet as he set aside each piece of armour his body seemed to grow heavier. He laid his last piece of leg plate and turned to her slowly, clad only in his soft wool tunic and breeches. Again, she rushed into his arms, but this time he made a point to scoop her up, to pull her into his chest and let her rest her cheek on his shoulder. The force of her sobs shook him in his core and so he pulled her tighter, and tighter, and tighter still, until their bodies seemed to click together like a tongue in a groove and her heart beat made waves across his chest. He twisted in her arms to place a kiss against her hair, the force of it meant to reassure her, and caught a lungful of her scent, all delicate and feminine, so sweet, so Sansa, _Sansa_...

"Sansa," he groaned in a whisper, one of his arms moving to stroke her back, twisting his fingers in her hair. She had stopped her sobbing, he realized, though he could not have known when—minutes ago, perhaps. At the sound of her name she shifted; her hands were moving too now—from around his shoulders up to the back of his neck, long, cool fingers curling around him, moving into his hair, scratching against his scalp. One found its way under his jaw to cup his cheek, and then she pulled him to her, hopping up to catch his lips again.

_Again? Oh, Little Bird..._Gasping into her kiss, he pulled her waist tighter still against him and moved to cup her cheek too, trying to make up for crushing her to him with the delicacy of his touch. She sighed beneath him and he felt something hot stir within him—steam perhaps, or smoke—and he became quickly aware that this kiss was not like the first. She slid a hand down and pressed it flat against his chest, digging her fingernails into his tunic. For a fraction of a second he lost himself to the high of the moment, and Sandor Clegane had never felt so incredible.

But then the moment ended, and he began to think again.

"Your Grace—" He said, breaking her kiss, but she snatched him back, and he tried to stifle the moan that built within him but found he could not. "My Lady," he said, pulling away more forcefully, but she leapt up onto him again, this time wrapping her legs around his torso. He lost himself for another small moment, catching her arse, drawing her against him before nearly throwing her to the floor. "_Little Bird_," he said cautiously, and that seemed to stop her, though her eyes were filled with nothing like remorse as she gently dropped herself from where she clung to him, soothingly running her hands along the sleeves of his tunic.

"I know it seems impulsive, but I promise I have thought this through," she whispered to him, her voice steady and sure. "It was part of the Gods' plan all along. You were the man they meant to have me, in the end. And tonight, I am finally yours." She was smiling, but he could not.

"That is madness, Little Bird," he said lowly. He was a wanted, lowborn scoundrel, after all, and she the most magnificent of Queens.

"It is the only way I can _face_ it," she whimpered, seemingly to herself, her eyes wetting again. He never knew a woman who could cry with such dignity. She closed her eyes, her brow furrowing. "Ever since we parted, you know I have prayed for your return. I was far from the reach of my Gods when Lord Petyr gave me to Harry—they had no control over that. Had I been near to them, I would have been ready for you when you appeared. I never loved him. I was not meant for him. I was meant for you—"

"You were _not_—"

"Silence!" she hissed. "I have to be. Or else..." and she began to sob again, and each new sob that racked her broke his heart little by little, "or else the Gods have abandoned me, taken everyone resembling family that I have ever had, forsaken me and _damned me! _This _has_ to be their will, Sandor, can you not see?!" And she turned away from him, stomping and fleeing to her window, but he caught her wrist in his fingers and twisted her back, crouching to a height with her, reacting to her as his instincts did, all tenderness.

"The Gods have not forsaken you, Little Bird," he rasped gently, holding her shoulders, thumbing away the tears on her cheeks. "The Gods have not damned you. Who could ever think to damn you, Little Bird, when you are a little piece of heaven in and of yourself?" She was sniffling, but listening to him, and so he said what she wanted to hear, and decided to assess the truth of it all later. "If you need me tonight, Sansa, then I am yours."

"Forever?"

"Tonight," he asserted, sighing.

"_Forever_," she insisted, and by way of ending the argument snatched him into a kiss again. He shuddered against her beneath the weight of his rapture, giving himself entirely to her will. Gone were all thoughts of responsibilities, of propriety, for his sake or for hers. This time, Sandor did not battle the heat that built within him, did not stop himself from nibbling at her, suckling her earlobe, trailing kisses down her neck. This time his hands went where they would, as hers did, and he found himself encouraged by her mewling sighs. He understood then as she relaxed into his arms in submission that he had never before known passion, true passion, or elation, or happiness, or...

_Love. Gods, I love her. I love her, I..._

"I love you, Sansa Stark," he groaned into her neck, his declaration base and instinctual, yet at the same time he felt the secret had been ripped from him, as though some vital organ of his removed and left him shuddering in vulnerability without it.

But she sighed in ecstasy, hastily replacing what he had lost. "And I love you, Sandor Clegane."

He knew he could not stop her after that. He would not. He would learn what her hair looked like spilled over the white linens, what artful perfection she kept hidden under her wool and satin. He would know her softness and make her ivory skin flush. He would feel her legs around his waist and her palms against his chest. He would make her sing for him—she would sing for him willingly, as he had always wanted her to. She was his tonight.

And she was.

Never had he known a woman like he knew Sansa Stark that night. Never before had his heart burst along with his loins, had he spilled both his soul and his seed into a woman. Never before had he the courage to look a woman in the eyes while he took his pleasure, and yet with Sansa he found he could not look away. Never before had his skin seemed to smoulder beneath a woman's touch, burning hotter and hotter until his whole flesh melted into her, but for as broken as he had been the first time he burned, Sansa had put him all back together, borrowing no parts but rebuilding what had so long been broken. And as he lay spent, sweating, clutching her to him as though she could trickle out from between his fingers like water, never had he known a more complete good in the world as she fought the air around her to keep his kiss. She was a more magnificent perfection than he could have ever imagined.

"Forever," she whispered, fighting off sleep.

"Forever," he agreed. The smile on her lips broke his heart with fresh bliss, and she murmured something like "I love you," as she slipped away into unconsciousness.

But Sandor was awake and restless, and as the glow of their passion faded into the black of the winter night, his thoughts circled back to Hardyng, and he found himself feasting with guilt.

Not for what he had done with her, no—there was too much right with it to ever feel guilt for such a thing—but for how quickly after Hardyng's death they had done it. The boy was not yet cold in his coffin and her belly still swelled with his son. Sansa and Cersei could not have been more dissimilar, yet both of them had now slept with members of their sworn royal guard. For the Lannister Queen it had marked her downfall, and Sandor was sick with the idea that he could be the cause of a similar fate for the Little Bird.

Sandor had sworn to protect her deep in his heart long before he knelt before her in the throne room in Winterfell, since the day she had tried to off Prince Joffrey on the walls of the Red Keep. He wanted to believe what she had said—that he was the man her Gods meant her to have—but he knew what her people thought of him, and could only suppose what they would say if (_when?_) she presented him as her paramour to the court. Sansa Stark had been his salvation since the day she danced into his life, her innocence giving him hope when he thought he could have none, leading him from his life as the Hound to a place where he could be Sandor Clegane, a man again. He had not earned his salvation yet, though; he had to protect her the one way he knew she would not, _could_ not protect herself.

He would have to leave her again.

He could not even fight with himself over the fact of the matter, the necessity of it was so abundantly clear. If he stayed, she would have him and he would have her, again and again and again. People would talk, her court would resent her for it. She would lose respect and power over him if he let her, but he knew he could not. What sort of protector would he be if he did? The Hound might have let her destroy herself, a creature of selfishness as he had been, but Sandor could not. He _would_ not.

He had to leave, and fast, before the perfection of her adoration could convince him otherwise.

_Not forever,_ he thought to himself, hot tears building up behind his eyes as he took up his white cloak and tucked it in around her, scratching a clumsily-lettered note on a scrap of parchment and slipping it between her sleeping fingers. He left his armour behind in his chambers as he dressed in his warmest furs, his body impossibly and inexplicably heavy. The whole castle was sleeping and quiet; even the storm had stilled by the time he saddled Stranger and raised the portcullis for himself, trusting completely to the will of whichever Gods had brought him to her in the first place. If she was right (and never had he wanted anything as badly as he wanted her to be) about her Gods, then this would not be the last time he saw her.

And though everything in him was screaming to return to her, Sandor earned his salvation by her, riding off into the night in no direction at all.


	21. Sansa X

A/N: Reviews keep my chapters from fighting me. Help a girl out and leave one in the box below!

**SANSA**

_Little Bird,_

_You are a woman in mourning, and I have dishonoured you. I must remove myself before I dishonour you further, before your court and Kingdom. There would be no end to your dishonour if I stay. _

_If you ever find it in your heart to forgive me, I would be deeply indebted to you._

_Ever your servant,_

_Sandor_

She crunched up the parchment so tightly her hand began to cramp. Sansa wanted to unsee it, to go back to the minute before when her confusion found a thousand preferable explanations for waking up wrapped in his Queensguard cloak, alone in her bed. Wordless anger flooded her veins in thickening waves. _But Winter is coming. Where will he go?_

She folded her arms and rested them on her swollen belly, and Edwyn gave her a little kick, as if he was himself objecting to Sandor's noted absence. She would be less four of her ten members of her Queensguard now, with the necessary demotions and executions to be preformed later that day. It was so selfish of him! He was afraid for himself—he _must_ have been—after what the knights had done to him simply for his appointment, what would they do to him if they ever found out about what he had done with their Queen? But it was not for himself that he had partaken in their relations; he had climbed into her bed on _her_ insistence. He knew how she needed him now; how could he abandon her when she needed him most?!

She could still smell him in her hair, and there were little bruises forming on her hips, though she could tell he had tried to be careful with her. He was overpowering, physically and spiritually, but being with him had been nothing short of sublime. _This is where I belong_, she had thought from beneath him, their bodies joined, her hands in his hair. _I was born to love him._

But she had awoken alone, wrapped up in his cloak, smelling of him, the flesh of her inner thighs sticking together. Confusion turned to fear and was eventually corrected to rage once she found the note tucked under her pillow. She dressed in a numb fury and called for porridge to break her fast, eating without tasting as she stared out her window in search for some sort of comfort. The sky was charcoal-gray, laden with low-hanging clouds. _The colour of his eyes, _she thought, and quickly lost her appetite.

She called in her great-uncle and informed him of Sandor's desertion. The words caught in her throat and tickled her spine unpleasantly but she got the point across to him, feigning ignorance of any reason why he would have left. Sandor had been the only person she was truly honest with, and that was not about to change, whether he was by her side or not.

As the season waned to almost total darkness, her underlying fury became the sun that warmed her skin, that painted the sky red as it rose from within her every morning, that set to a blue-black despair in the west. Her growing son was the only cresting joy in her life as she let out the bodice of the black mourning gown she had sown first for Sandor and felt it grow tight again within the week. Soon she had to fashion a new gown all on its own, placing the waist just under her bust in order to give her a reprieve from her endless sewing, yet then she found she had little to do other than adjust rations and grow ever more anxious that her people would starve, these providing little distraction from the unbecoming pain ever in her heart, the pain that seeded her delicate, omnipresent fury in an attempt to quell its sharp ache. Hard as she tried, though, never could she banish completely her pain, for the rage with which she attacked it was false, as false as any love she might have claimed for King Joffrey once he murdered her father right before her eyes.

Awake she would lie at night, tangled in her furs, always thinking of him. Some nights she would blame herself, let herself sob inelegantly, puffing white clouds into the night as her lips quivered and her chest shake. She had pushed him away, she thought, disgusted him with her impropriety, and so he had left her. Other nights she scorned him, deciding that, monster that he was, he had never loved her truly, and had manipulated her into feeling the way she had felt for him for his own sick pleasure. She had indulged him in her body, and therefore he was done with her. He must have done the same to Cersei too, she would think, absolutely mad with pain, but as the Gods were good, those nights were few. Most nights, though, she just felt empty. Her bed was cold and her body was cold. Her heart was cold. _Heartbreak is for the Summer_, she could almost hear Old Nan saying, _and Winter is coming._

(Never in the history of the world, however, had heartbreak been an agreeable or timely thing.)

As the ninth moon since her wedding night waxed, House Umber rode into Winterfell in force, theirs the only house in the North still retaining a Maester of the Citadel to bring forth her son into this dark, harsh Winter. She feasted them with what meagre rations of meat she could yet spare, setting the Greatjon in the place of honour to her right as she had seen her father do so many times before. He leaned over to beg a private audience with her after the meal between the soup course and the main, which had to be cooked there in the hearths of the great hall to keep it from getting cold on its way up from the kitchens, the whole of the castle perfumed with the heady and indulgent smell of roasting meat. It would have once been enough to delight her, but her heart had grown too heavy to be carried off by such light things as that of late. She assented, and sent a serving boy to ready her solar with mulled wine and a fire in the hearth.

"As much as childbearing becomes you, Your Grace," he announced as they swept into the warm room, gently scented with wine, "despair does not. What is it that grieves you so profoundly, my child? Loss of your Lord husband? I think not."

She blinked at him, taken a little aback by his frank speech. His blue eyes twinkled as he waited for her to sit before he did, drawing their chairs nearer to the hearth in a vain attempt to warm themselves. He explained. "I saw the way you looked at him during your coronation, Your Grace. I saw how you loved him then. There is only so much affection that could have bloomed in the interim."

"I loved my husband well," Sansa insisted, and heard in her voice the same route coolness that had been her only protection in the southron capital, the tone that had inspired Sandor's nickname. Her heart broke a little more.

He smiled, his wizened face dignified as ever. "This is not King's Landing, child, there is no need to lie to me. I will not run off to tell your _valiant _Knights of the Vale."

Sansa snickered. The Greatjon had always known how to cut to the quick of things, had always spoken his mind whether it would be of benefit to him or not, but was not cursed with the same sort of Northern stubbornness that her own family possessed to a fault. He was less three fingers (but, thankfully, not his life) after speaking his mind and then changing it, at the beginning of the War of Five Kings.

"I am troubled by the desertion of a sworn brother of my Queensguard," she sighed, conceding. The Greatjon chortled.

"Sandor Clegane, aye. I heard about that," he leaned forward, sweeping a piece of hair behind her ear. He had always been tender with her. "Why does it trouble you so, child? The truth now—you need not lie to me."

Sansa looked at her knees, trying to hide the shame on her face while she came up with a lie. He took her chin in his fingers (_like Sandor does. Did,_ she tried not to think) and tilted her face up to look at him.

"I mean it, Sansa. Tell it true."

She drew her spine straight and said, as evenly and boldly as she could manage, "because I loved him."

"Aye, there's the rub. Is he gone because you willed him away, child?"

Sansa shook her head, tears building up with a lump in her throat, and soon she was crying and spilling her heart to her Lord, so like an uncle to her. He did not balk, even at the most scandalous of the things she had done, and yet the act of confessing it all, in making her confront her behaviour, still filled her with a profound and grieving guilt. She knew the horrible, sobering truth of it all before the Greatjon even drew breath to serve it to her.

"He has done right by you, Sansa. You are freshly widowed, and Queen in the North besides—it only speaks to how much he must love you to leave you, even in such a state, for the sake of your honour." She curled inward at her pain and shame, but before she could start well and truly wailing, he caught her ear. "But Your Grace, why is it that you cannot, after your time in mourning, marry him in your Godswood?"

"Why not?" Sansa looked at him, bewildered through her tears. "I...my Lord, I am...and he is...and...just, politics, and...I cannot just do as I _please_!"

The Greatjon was shaking his head, though. "But you can, Your Grace. If there was anything your Lord Husband meant to protect with his final act, it was your will. If it is your will to take Sandor Clegane as your husband, than you can. You _will._ Anyone who wants to stop you can go talk to Harrold Hardyng about it."

"But...But what if...my people, they _hate _him!" She threw her head into her hands with ever-fresh despair. He reached to pat her back.

"Maybe, Your Grace, but they love you, and so does he. Love for you united the North with the Vale; it can unite your people with an unlikely King Consort."

Sansa sniffled, thinking it all over. Was that what Harry had died for—to prove a _point_? To define _loyalty_?

And had it _worked_?

"If you think it would be of service, Your Grace, I would be most pleased to publicly offer my blessings for you both."

She sniffled again. "Would you?"

"Aye, child. It would be an honour."

She nodded. It was not happiness she was yet feeling, but she surely felt _better_, no emptiness gnawing inside her chest...

...until she remembered that he was lost, out in the wilderness of the Northern Winter, subject to all manner of inhospitable climes. How was she to find him when he had disappeared like breath into a midnight snow these two moons past, no rumours of his whereabouts as she had yet heard. There were a hundred ways he could be dead already, or so near to death it made no difference, even if she did manage to find him...

Her lips had begun to quiver, the word "lost" upon them like a mantra. The Greatjon pulled her into his arms then, and kissed her forehead.

"Do not despair, Your Grace. Breathe the command and my men are at your service. None more than men of the Last Hearth are better equipped to go searching in this cold."

She could only nod. "You need your rest, child. Never know when the little prince could come," the Greatjon smiled, helping her up from her chair and leading her by the hand to her solar door. She smiled wanly, her face sticky and taut with salt, but it felt good to smile again. Stroking her belly as she wandered back to her chambers, she found herself smiling wider and wider, a giddy warmth spreading out from within her, filling her with such radiant energy she felt as though she could skip down the corridors, even for how heavy she was on her legs. It overtook her with all its force, and it was warm like him, strong like him. So caught up in it was she that Sansa could have sworn in that moment that it smelled of him. Hope, it was, and fiercer than any hope she had known before. _Your Gods brought him to you once,_ she thought to herself,_ they will bring him back again._ Edwyn kicked her in agreement.

_Oh_, she thought, not quite outside her chamber door, _that feels queer. _A cascade of wet and warmth ran down her legs all of a sudden. _ Have I lost control of my bladder?_ The wetness did not smell of urine, though. It did not really smell of anything.

Just...water.

_Oh!_


	22. Sandor X

**SANDOR**

When the northern winds blew, he shook along with the trees. Fires did not so much warm him as bring the blood stinging back to his extremities, and the sheer depth of the cold gnawed at any bit of skin he let it have. He had not seen a looking-glass since he left the castle, but he could not imagine the cold improved his countenance any—red-cheeked and red-nosed, his long black hair tangled and forgotten, knotted by the wind, a beard coming in patchy on the good side of his face so coarse he could sand down a plank with it. _If you saw me now, Little Bird, what pretty words would you think to say?_

At least the sun had started rising again. Three moons past it had risen more boldly than he could remember since the gods-forsaken winter had begun, and not a fortnight later he caught sight of a white raven flying hard north against the black of the night sky. But the Maesters of the Citadel knew naught of this cold—any man who had frozen in the Northern Winter and burned in the seven hells would choose the fires over the snows.

_Not really_, he would think to himself darkly, burned side of his face twitching, but it was an entertaining thought nonetheless.

His thick-lined gloves he had peeled off some corpse made him clumsy while he skinned his dinner, a skinny snow fox he had found lurking around his camp in the weirwood grove, probably hoping for scraps. It was a kindness he had done for the animal, and a kindness the animal had done for him. This would be the first fresh meal Sandor had eaten in a fortnight or more—the rations to be purchased in the towns could hardly sustain a man as big as him, and there was little wildlife available for hunting. _This is madness, dog,_ he would think to himself, _you would have done better staying in Winterfell. You could have fought the Little Bird's advances, discouraged her until she forgot about you,_ but he knew that was wrong. It was absurd trying to picture himself putting a finger to her lips, telling her _no_ despite having her arms wrapped around him. Once he had even laughed out loud, a rasping, rattling noise that echoed back at him from the solemn faces of the weirwoods he tried to sleep beneath.

Sandor found himself increasingly drawn to the strange Northern faith, worship of the Old Gods, a quiet, personal sort of devotion that suited him better than the endless, meaningless rules and rituals that were included in the Faith of the Seven. He knew little of the Old Gods, but it seemed there was little to know, little to think about. Since spurning himself to these woods he found himself kneeling before their haunting, eerie faces and murmuring silent prayers for the Little Bird and for himself. Sometimes the wind would pick up as he finished, lumbering to his feet, and he felt as though something was answering him. Strangely, after five moons alone with them in the winter wood, these innumerable nameless gods were more real to him than the Seven had ever seemed.

At first he was hardly particular about where he camped, looking for clearings wide and flat and dry, or not so deep with snow, or well-hidden by the trees about. But something about the weirwood groves seemed safer, or warmer, or lighter perhaps, and soon he found himself staying in groves for weeks at a time, building ever-more permanent camps before the heart trees to keep himself in the eyes of the Old Gods. As if they could save him, perhaps. As if it had been they who had saved him, and not their Northern Queen in her infinite perfection, bared for him, all for him.

They were not saving him now, though, his whole body weak in the cold, hardly able to skin the fox, dead and sluggishly bleeding onto his breeches as he laboured to cut him up and skewer chunks of him to char over the fire. He was lucky the woods were so quiet; if it came to a fight...

But what was that sound? Like some animal crashing through the snow on the forest floor—he drew his dirk halfway from its sheath, letting the fox roll forgotten from his knees to lazily soak the snow with redness. Fright pumped through his veins—_that was a horse's whinny,_ he thought darkly, gulping with terror—despite it all, his body still feeling weak in contrast to the animalistic strength he had been accustomed to his whole life past. He wheeled around, looking for the intruders to his sacred space. _They are just smallfolk, coming forth to pray to their gods,_ he tried to will himself into thinking calmly, but it was no use. He caught a flash of red—a banner—and pulled his dirk free from its sheath, realizing with a pitiable, wild helplessness that he had nearly forgotten how to wield it, so mad was he with cold.

There were eleven of them emerging from the wood, each one adding to his overwhelming sense of vulnerability and desperation. _Please, don't kill me_, he wanted to beg, _your Queen will thank you. I promise._

A wizened old man who sat taller in his saddle than his age led Sandor to believe he had any right to gave him a smug sort of smirk as he reined his horse up just before the puffing, bundled deserter before him, clutching his dirk with all the primal and inefficient form of a wildling or a scared, green squire, and gave Sandor a smug sort of smirk. "I've been out in these woods _three moons_ searching for you," he said, letting his words hang heavily in the air as Sandor desperately tried to swallow the lump of fear building in his throat. But then the man laughed, deep and rumbling, seeming to shake the snow from the trees around him as it awoke similar laughter in his men about him. He glanced at the banners again and recognized the sigil. _House Umber. These are my Queen's men._ He stiffened, holding his dirk higher in an implied threat.

"Easy there, soldier. We mean you no harm," he said, giving Sandor an easy smile as he swung down from his saddle, crashing lightly into the snow, his hands making no move towards the longsword hanging at his side. "I am Jon of House Umber. Most know me as the Greatjon," he said, stepping towards Sandor slowly. He raised the dirk a little more and the man paused, putting his hands up in submission, still smiling.

"How did you find me?" Sandor rasped, a rush of white breath pluming up before him, obscuring his view. He whipped around to face some of the others. "Why have you come?"

"We come as it pleases Her Grace Sansa, long may she reign," the Greatjon said, eyeing him still with that easy smile of his. It was a kind smile, Sandor decided, but he was wary of the man still.

He straightened his posture and lowered his dirk. "I am a traitor and a deserter. For my crimes I should pay for my life," he said shakily, but the Greatjon shook his head.

"In another kingdom, perhaps. Lady Sansa sent me herself to come and look for you," he said, kicking the snow out of his way as he stepped forward and placed a hand on Sandor's forearm. "She wants you to come _home_, My Lord."

_Home. The Little Bird wants me to come home..._ Those were not words one said to a traitor, a deserter, a dog like him. Those were words for someone loved, someone respected, someone much better than him. But there was such earnestness in the old man's eyes, hand clapped on Sandor's shoulder, meeting his eyes fearlessly, a blue much lighter than Sansa's. "Winter has come and gone, and so too has your self-inflicted exile." He leaned in closely, whispering into his good ear. "She's mad with grief for you, Clegane. She needs looking after, and the Blackfish and I can hardly do it by ourselves."

Sandor imagined, for a moment, what she might have looked like, mad with grief for him, standing at her window with eyes red and raw, somehow maintaining dignity. To think that _he_ had been the one to put those tears in her eyes...well, it certainly had not been the first time she had cried over him, yet he was wracked with a fierce, repenting guilt all the same. He shivered and hung his head, dirk slipping from his fingers into the snow. "I am at her service."

"I was hoping you would say something like that," the Greatjon smiled again, clapping him on the shoulder once more before ordering his men to help Sandor pack up his camp, what little camp he had, and to feed and water his horse while the Lord fed the burned, repenting man from his own stores. "Winterfell is only three days' ride from here," he told him. "Do us a favour and keep that detail from Her Grace. If she finds out you were so close this whole time and it took us so long to find you, _both_ our heads will roll." And the big man laughed his rumbling, startling laugh again, and Sandor found himself coaxed little by little into comfort in the company of the Lord of House Umber.

"Has she whelped the little prince yet?" Sandor asked once they had begun to ride, the retaining men leaving the place of honour at the Lord's right for him, though he could not imagine why.

"She has," the Greatjon confirmed, graciously ignoring his coarsness, "it was an easy birth. The little prince was just that—so little. Only took her a day to have him. She was so strong, My Lord." He was quiet for a moment, eyes watching the forest ahead of them unseeing. "She cried out for you, you know."

"Did she?" Sandor felt a queer pang in his chest at that, strangely painless.

"That she did. Not often—it sounded as though she was trying to keep herself quiet—but we could hear her without. It was a moving display of affection."

Sandor swallowed at the image of the Little Bird, crying out in pain for him, alone as he had left her. "We?" he asked, trying to distract himself.

"Myself, my lords, her knights. Most of the court, really. Her Queensguard could hardly keep us back, so worried were we all for her. The birthing bed is the woman's battlefield, you know, and it was the blackest night of Winter when the boy started to come...we feared for her. But she is stronger than she looks, our Queen."

"She certainly is," Sandor agreed. "But she called for me? What did she say?"

"Oh, just your name. Some of her knights started to snigger, but I pointed out that Harrold Hardyng died to protect her will, and if having you near was her will, then it was misremembering Harry to scorn that."

Sandor sniggered himself. "I can only imagine what they had to say to _that_..."

The Greatjon shook his head. "Whatever they may have said then, nobody deigned to argue with their Queen when she..."

"...when she _what_, m'lord?"

He only shook his head again, smiling. "You will see soon enough, My Lord."

Three days they rode hard through the wolfswood, the Greatjon entertaining him with stories about the Little Bird from before he knew her. He told Sandor about how even at six she had insisted on dancing with every Lord present at feasts, how she had charmed them all and had them wrapped around her little finger. "She always liked me best, though," the Greatjon insisted, laughing and clapping Sandor on the shoulder as had become his custom during their ride, "because I would always slip her my lemoncake whenever they were handed out at feasts. Her mother would squawk at me for it but I could hardly help myself—she would give me this great big smile and a kiss on the cheek when I tucked it into her little waiting hands, our little secret always. She was such a charming little child," the old man sighed.

"She is such a charming young Lady," Sandor said reservedly. The Greatjon gave him a snort of laughter and a sidelong glance.

"Aye. And wouldn't you know it, My Lord?" Sandor flushed, suddenly embarrassed and angry, but the Greatjon just laughed and clapped his shoulder again. "Ah, but what a lucky man you are, Clegane. She could have any man in the seven kingdoms. And beyond the narrow sea too, no doubt. You are doubtless a better man than most think you to be."

"She certainly seems to think so, at least," Sandor said. That amused the Greatjon and set him to booming laughter again.

"Aye, that she does, man. That she certainly does. And you know what? That is good enough for me."

Sandor supposed it was good enough for him, too. _Too good, in fact._

It was late in the night when they reached the Winter Town, still full of farmers and peasants seeking shelter from the winter cold. They stopped at a finer inn than Sandor had last time he had stayed here, and the innkeep was waiting up for them, the Greatjon having sent one of his men ahead to prepare accommodations for them all. Sandor had his own room with a hearth and a full jug of wine, a finer vintage than he had ever found in an inn. The bed was plush and firm, piled high with furs already warmed by bricks from the fire, and there were night clothes laid out for him too, large enough to fit him and a finer material than he had ever owned in his life. It was all very peculiar, but he decided to ignore it, drank until he felt drowsy and crawled into bed, hoping sleep would come easy with the knowledge he would see the Little Bird again on the morrow.

He was awoken by a servant bringing him a tray loaded heavy with fried bread, eggs, a rasher of bacon burnt black, a bowl of porridge dressed with cream and dried berries and a dainty cup of hot mint tea. Sandor blinked a couple of times at the maidservant, waiting for her and all the splendour of the room around them to dissolve into something cruder, more like he deserved. It did not. He nearly burned his fingers on the hot grease on the bacon and bread and slurped up his tea and porridge with all the fervour of a starving man. No food had ever tasted so good.

A hot bath was up not long after he had broken his fast, servants bustling in and out as he leaned over his washbasin, hacking the hair off of his good cheek with a fine silver razor he almost could not figure out how to use. When his sweet-smelling bath was drawn he turned to disrobe when he found three comely, blushing maids stood behind it, equipped with bars of soap and brushes and sponges and combs. _What _is_ this place?_

"Thank you...for the bath, ladies. You are free to go." Sandor said, moving to unlace his breeches slowly, waiting for them to get out. They shifted their weight and tittered to one another, but did not move. He raised his good eyebrow at them and snorted, realizing they were looking at him, _leering_, almost. "Are you girls deaf? Get out and let a man bathe in peace!" He said gruffly, and though they looked taken aback, they still did not move.

"We were sent to attend your bath, ser."

"I'm no buggering _ser_!" he scowled, but they still did not budge. He stared them down, one by one, glowering as best he could, but that only seemed to encourage them. _The sooner you get this bath done with, the sooner you will see your Little Bird again. Maybe this is for the better._ He continued to glower at them as he unlaced and stepped out of his breeches, into the hot and sweet-smelling copper bathtub they had filled for him. And oh, they had blushed prettily then. He sniggered at them but kept any scornful comments to himself as they set quickly to combing his hair and scrubbing him clean for their Queen. The bathwater was dark when he stood from it, warm and clean, his black hair soaped and combed free of tangles. The maids patted him dry with soft cloths, shy-eyed and giggling. _They like you,_ he realized belatedly, and suddenly felt a bashful vulnerability he had not felt since his boyhood. Fresh garments had been set out for him, soft black breeches, a soft, silken tunic, and a quilted yellow doublet, the three black hounds of his house stitched finely into the fabric. A thick black cloak accompanied it as well, and supple black leather boots too, all fitting as though they had been made for him. _Don't delude yourself, dog. You know they were._

He gathered with the rest of the Umber party in the common room of the inn at first light and found that some brave stableboy had brushed Stranger's mane and tail and oiled his saddle to a bright black sheen. They set out for Winterfell at a glacial pace—Sandor thought he was going mad as Stranger picked up each of his hooves almost delicately, one at a time, putting each down squarely in the snow before deigning to pick up another. He was surprised they reached Winterfell at all, though somewhere within him he knew it had been the same ten-minute ride it had been last time he had made it.

"Not to say that you would not do this the right way on your own," the Greatjon whispered, leaning over the gap between their horses to whisper into Sandor's good ear, "but swallow any embarrassment you might have about this sort of thing and ask her good and proper. She may be the Queen, lad, but she's a lady all the same, and ladies do not ask for their lord's hands."

Sandor thought his heart would stop, there in the courtyard without Winterfell. He opened and closed his mouth several times to the Greatjon's bemusement before he managed to choke out, "ask—for her _hand?_"

The Greatjon was still snickering. "Aye. She told me you would not believe me, but at the time I thought she was exaggerating." He swung down from his horse and Sandor felt a sudden pang of something like dread, but Lord Umber pulled him aside, a man of tall enough stature to whisper into Sandor's ear without consequence. "Remember that she is still in mourning—her Knights of the Vale will like that you remember that."

And then he was behind the heavy oaken door as he had once been less than a year earlier, waiting as the Greatjon and the rest of the Umber party went forth into the throne room. He heard the old man announce his arrival, booming in that great low voice of his, "Sandor Clegane, Lord of the Dreadfort."

_The Dreadfort?!_ But he was walking forward then, and the men on either side of the aisle stood to attention as his footsteps echoed off the stones and knelt with murmurs of 'My Lord,' as he passed. It stirred a queer, prideful feeling from within him.

And then the whole world fell away when he caught sight of her again. _Every time you see her, you think she cannot possibly get any more beautiful, and every time you are wrong. _She smiled at him, a restrained little expression, her eyes glittering and her jaw set.

It was all he could do not to break into a run.

As he drew close she stepped down off the dais and opened her arms to embrace him. He had forgotten then about the room full of Lords and Ladies and Knights completely by then, and scooped up his Little Bird and cradled her against his chest, like he had the last night they had been together. Her dress was black but still she looked so full of joy she seemed close to bursting. "I missed you," she whispered, kissing his cheek before he set her down lightly, remembering, still incredulous, what the Greatjon had told him to do, and sunk to his knees, holding her little hands in his.

"Sansa, Your Grace," he choked, kissing her knuckles as she brought her hands to caress his face, as though neither of them could believe that the other was actually there before them. "I know not what I ever did to earn your affections, but everything you have ever done has earned you mine," he felt a flush creeping up his face, but swallowed and ignored it. _Speak to her and the right words will come._ "I love you with my whole heart, Sansa, and have knelt before every heart tree I have found in these five moons past praying simply to look upon your face again. Lord Umber has brought me forth, understanding your will—I am ever your servant, Sansa—and it is only because of this that I have the courage to ask: Sansa Stark, once your period of mourning is done, will you do me the honour of marrying me?"

Oh, how she was smiling, pulling one hand free to flit between her heart and her mouth. She was crying, but they were not the tears he knew so well on her. _There is no way this is real,_ he balked as she drew him up, nodding emphatically, pulling his face down to her for a tender kiss before the whole of her court. And her court, her Knights and Lords and Ladies, they were_ cheering_ for him as he took her waist in his arms and placed a big hand on her cheek. After a long, sweet moment she stepped down from the kiss and turned him around to face the room. _So many of them all..._ but every one of the nobles in attendance looked upon them both with expressions of contentment. He tilted his head to look down at the Little Bird, clutching his arm, the very picture of joy, and with a jolt it occurred to Sandor that it was _him _who had brought her such joy, and because of this, her court had accepted him. _Seven save me..._

It was not the work of the Seven he had been named in the light of, though, that Sansa Stark, the Queen in the North, was now his betrothed. It had been her Old Gods that had brought him back to her, for _her_ sake, to do _her_ good. And that meant more to him than any other honour ever could.


	23. The Queen in the North, and her King

SEVEN MONTHS LATER

**THE QUEEN'S BETROTHED**

"Digga," the little pup said conclusively.

"Are you sure about that, little man?" Sandor asked. Edwyn pulled down sharply on his hair in response, and Sandor could not help but laugh at the pup. He was even more charming than his mother, this little prince. Sandor would not have guessed it possible, but once the boy started making a point of reaching out to the Queen's betrothed (out of affection or want of warmth, Sandor was not sure, but he had his suspicions) he had the man the Hound had left behind wrapped around his littlest finger. As far as Sandor was concerned, Edwyn could do no wrong. Sansa teased him about it occasionally, but Sandor never saw anything but mist-eyed delight on her face whenever she caught the two of them having a moment.

"I did not know I had the capacity to love you any more than I already do, Sandor," she had whispered, only a few weeks after his return, giving him a lingering kiss on his cheek as he rocked the sleeping child in his arms, wrapped up close against his broad chest for warmth. Sandor gave her an affectionate smile as he set the boy down in the little crib he had carved for him, deftly plucking out the warm brick from beneath the furs and putting it back in the fire quietly before taking his betrothed in his arms and kissing her tenderly, deeply, and escorting her back to her chambers, where he somehow managed to leave her.

It was the first thing he had done upon returning, building the prince his little crib. Up until Sandor's return the boy had slept in a basket crudely wrought and covered in tanned aurochs hide, _grievously unfit for a prince, _he had thought; in such a frenzy to build something worthy of the boy that Sandor had forgotten to take his inevitable growth into account, and had built him a pretty little crib that was exactly that—_little—_and though the pup was of his Little Bird and her late husband, nearly of a height with her, he outgrew his crib in little more than a week, and Sandor had to build him another. The second would hold him until the prince was big enough for a bed of his own, Sandor hoped, the bars of its basket made up of twining plaits of white and red wood, stained with weirwood sap, as his father's coffin had been. On the top corners of the crib he had carved little hatching birds and puppies at play, and jonquil flowers for his mother to admire. It had been a comfort to be carving again, and he had hoped to do more of it, before Sansa suggested that Sandor turn his attention to keeping the boy warm with his body heat as the winter chill supposedly thawed to a spring. Coming inside to watch the boy meant seeing more of Sansa, and while he worried over his self-control, his self-discipline related to their betrothal and upholding her honour, Sandor was no longer in a spirit to deny her any request.

It was much easier than he had expected it to be, though, upholding her honour. Waiting for what was to come was so much easier now that he knew it was coming, and fast. Most evenings he sat with her, sipping wine or honeyed milk and relaying his day with her son to her while she sewed his wedding cloak, her needle dashing in and out of the broad swath of yellow silk that he watched her transform into the most splendid garment he had ever seen. He had done nothing to deserve such finery, he would insist, if only to watch her huff and put her hands down, giving him a dismissive little glare before picking right back up where she left off, her needle flashing in and out of the silk with a sort of petulant fury (if one could even sew with fury to begin with) as if to spite him. All his bitterness, his fight, his distain drained from him in her presence, he would only laugh, cross the space between them, press a kiss to her forehead, and let her go back to crafting him a cloak he would never feel as though he earned the right to wear for her.

"Digga," the little prince insisted, pulling harder on Sandor's hair. He knew what he meant by _that_.

"Alright, your highness, alright," Sandor rasped, smiling, and took the boy under his arms and held him out, feather-light as he was, meeting the boy's eyes to watch the delight and anticipation within them. Sandor coiled slowly, raising and lowering the boy gently in the air before throwing him up, only for a fraction of a second, his hands never really leaving the boy's waist, and guiding him back down again. The prince broke out into a wild fit of giggles.

And oh, how the little child laughed for him, an infectious, effervescent sound that rang off the stones around them and coloured his whole world the colours of sunrise. Sandor tossed him up again, a little higher this time, and the next, and the next, until he was throwing the boy up and snatching him back again with abandon, his own laugh rumbling in his chest, his smile so broad he thought his face would break. _Imagine when you are holding your own son for true,_ he thought for a moment, but shook his head. Though not of his blood, Edwyn was as much a son to him as any other sons Sansa might give him.

When the boy tired Sandor pulled him against his chest, still cradling him easily in one arm even two moons shy of his first nameday. _This_ was doing right by Harry's memory, Sandor had realized, stepping in to care for the family he left behind, being a father to his son, teaching his heir how to be a man. It was a great honour, he decided, but beyond that, a great joy as well. It was a currency with which he was more than happy to repay Hardyng for saving his life; it cost him nothing at all.

Edwyn made little contented noises as he rocked back and forth with Sandor's stride. The prince was sure to be hungry, he figured—if Sansa did not manage to feed him before the pup went down for his nap he would wake in a screaming wrath, and Sandor was not about to subject the boy to the hunger that would prompt it. And so he, with the prince balling his little fists into his tabard, sought out the Queen in the North.

She sat with her small council, the Blackfish and the Greatjon, in her solar, a great fire roaring in the hearth that pinked her cheeks and played against the fire in her hair. Her eyes lit up as he entered and she stood to greet them, shooting up onto her tiptoes to place a kiss on his cheek as she pulled her son into her arms. "Let us break for luncheon, my lords. I will send for you once the little beast is fed." Edwyn was pulling at her hair too, Sandor observed, but the Queen in the North paid his pulling about as much mind as her betrothed did. She kissed her son's pale blonde hair and took a deep breath, pulling in his scent as her small council assented and left her solar quickly. "Here, would you?" She half-said, handing her child back to Sandor while she adjusted her cloak to keep her modesty and warmth while she fed him and unlaced her bodice to her navel. Sandor pretended to bite the boy's shoulder, mouthing at him with his lips and drawing a gleeful squeal from the child. He kissed him on his temple before handing him back to his mother, meeting her eyes that seemed to say she was happy just to watch them together.

"Has he been good for you today?" She asked him, after cooing at her son for a minute or so. Sandor was stroking her arm, her cheek, pushing his fingers through her hair. He gave a rumbling chuckle.

"You know he has."

"It would not do to assume anything," Sansa said haughtily, unable to hide the glitter in her eye. She stroked her son's head and then glanced up at her betrothed, giving Sandor a look that seemed to say _come kiss me_. He obliged her, sighing against her skin.

"One more day, Your Grace," he said, his voice breaking under the weight of his excitement.

"I know. And it is killing me. Harry died a year ago _last week_; I could have been wearing that splendid cloak of yours for ten whole days now!"

"Now now, Little Bird, you mustn't be hasty..." he rasped, trailing off as he pressed kisses into her temple, her hair. She chuckled duskily.

"You say that as if you are not, but _I _know better," she said coyly, and turned her attention back to the boy at her breast before he could claim her lips again.

As he paced back from her chambers that night (she had insisted on seeing him in the fine yellow cloak one more time, to be _sure_ she kept herself from sobbing the next day, she insisted) Sandor decided to make a detour and stop in the Godswood. Winterfell's hear t tree was easily the most majestic he had come to know, and he had been a frequent visitor in the Godswood since his return to the castle, if only to sit and stare at the weeping eyes, revelling in the quiet sanctity of the place, letting his thoughts of gratitude come and go. But Sandor felt the need to pray tonight, pray in earnest.

There was a small boulder nestled before the heart tree, polished to a sheen by the arses of generations of Starks. Sandor had originally felt a sort of reverence for it as though it had been a throne, a seat before the Old Gods that he was not worthy of, but he would marry their Queen on the morrow, and he figured that, considering the circumstances and the conversation he meant to have with them, they would not mind if he perched there this evening. Sandor sunk himself down onto the stone carefully, leaning his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands before him, looking up through his lashes at the stoic features carved into the heart tree. He took a deep breath of the quiet, releasing it in a sigh, shaking his head and rubbing his legs, straightening before leaning over again.

"Old Gods," he rasped, knowing not what to call them, "with your blessings, I will marry your last Stark once the sun rises again. I know I am no child of yours, named in the light of the Seven Gods that drove you out of the south, and if that is an offence, forgive me for it." He sighed again. "Old Gods, help me to be worthy of her. She is a great gift, I know that—better than I think I deserve, but you lot seem to think differently, do you not?" He was met with silence, and his boldness shrunk some. "Help me uphold the honour of this great house, let that honour guide my decisions and make me into a better man than I am. Help me conquer the fear inside me that makes me an animal..." and he trailed off, not knowing what to say.

And then, gods damn him if he dreamt it, the tree _spoke._

"_What you reap on the morrow, and for the rest of your days, you have sown by letting your honour, and not your fear, instruct you_." It was just the wind in the branches, whistling and whispering as Northern winds do, but Sandor swore it sounded like the voice of a young boy. "_You are blessed with as much as you deserve, Sandor Clegane._"

The wind died then. It did not pick back up again for as long as he sat there, his bones unstable and unstill, his whole body quaking with the magnitude of the moment that was fading before him. Her gods had spoken to him, accepted him, blessed him with her, insisting that he deserved it all. It was too much, but Sandor was immobile. It could have been an hour he sat there, slowly freezing, his spirit a wellspring of awe, swallowing hard and waiting for the illusion to shatter, but it never did. _You should get some rest_, something inside him insisted, _tomorrow will be the greatest day of your life._

But the wind rose again.

"_Not so,_" it seemed to say, _"but it will be the greatest day yet._"

And holding that in his heart as truth, Sandor rose, strode from the Godswood, and made his way to his chambers, where he managed to quiet his excitement long enough to find sleep.

**THE QUEEN IN THE NORTH**

Though one would not have guessed as much considering the pervasive cold, her kingdom was ten moons in progress towards Spring, each day a little longer, the sun a little brighter, higher in the sky. What was left of the Northern livestock was already starting to reproduce again, as farmers all across her Northern hills from the New Gift to the Neck were reporting births in droves from their sheep, goats and cattle. Hens had started laying eggs again, and Lords south of Moat Callin were reporting little red buds sprouting on their heart trees in their Godswoods. And Sansa, Queen in the North, she was filled anew with hope as her kingdom sputtered back to life about her.

"Lord Cerwyn reports three-score more piglets birthed on his lands this last moons' turn, Your Grace," the Greatjon said, looking over the parchment that had come in from the Castle Cerwyn that morn. "I dare say, I am nearly convinced of this Spring."

"You saw the white raven yourself, My Lord," Sansa said to him, puzzled by his scepticism.

"Aye, but those bastards have been wrong before, sitting down there sweating in that little southron citadel of theirs. Pardon my language, Your Grace," he added belatedly. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught her great-uncle rolling his eyes. She wanted to snicker at them both.

Just then Sandor let himself into her solar, her son's feet sticking out from beneath his cloak. She could not help herself—she stood and rushed to him, kissing her betrothed and then her son and sending her council from the room, leaving her with the two men she loved more than she ever thought herself able to love.

Just as her kingdom was sputtering back to life, so was her family. Her mother, father, sister and brothers were all gone if not dead, as were both of her previous husbands, all taken from her cruelly. Yet here was Sandor, standing guard over her as he always had, rebuilding her family with his love for her and her son, who cleaved to him almost as dearly as she did. The morrow could not come fast enough, when she would finally be his in the eyes of Gods and men, when she would be his as she always had been, in truth.

Sandor kissed and nipped at her son playfully, Edwyn shrieking in delight at his attention, and Sansa's heart was filled so with joy that she knew it would burst. If all the pain she had suffered up until now had been payment for the happiness she now knew, it was worth it. Sandor slipped an arm around her back as she nursed her son and she laid her head against his shoulder, and remembered again what it felt like to be _home._

"Come to my chambers tonight," she whispered, handing her son back to him once he had fallen asleep at her breast.

"We are so _close_, Sansa—"

"Not for that," she said quickly, knowing he would deny her anything improper before the wedding , as he had since the day he returned to her. "I would see you in your cloak again. Just to be sure."

He sighed, chuckling warmly, nuzzling her hair. "You have seen me in it ten times _just to be sure,_" he teased, kissing her temple, before he took the boy back to his crib for his nap.

He obliged her, though, walking her back to her chambers after supper and letting her dress him in his wedding garb _again_. If she had to explain herself, she would have insisted that she liked to see him in clothes she had stitched for him, his yellow wool doublet with the black trimming, black wool breeches, and his great cloak, a bold yellow, (almost gold, she mused, smoothing it over his broad shoulders with more care than the task necessitated) covered in her careful stitching, three large black dogs leaping down his back. Honestly, though, she only wanted an excuse to have him before her, to let her run her hands over his chest, bare to her as she dressed him, and feel his eyes on her, watching her revel in the ritual of it all, trying to commit it to memory. She would not have the pleasure of dressing him before their wedding, she knew.

"But every other day, for the rest of my days," he had insisted before kissing her, trying to be chaste and failing oh so miserably. He put her to bed himself, stroking her hair against the pillows and kissing her nose delicately, waiting for her to close her eyes, too drowsy to protest, before he left the room. _For the last time_, she thought gleefully before submitting herself to sleep.

She rose before the sun, wide awake in an instant. _**This**__ is the day you have always waited for, your whole life long,___she said to herself, smiling for no one as she awaited her bath, watching the sun reach long pink fingers into the eastern sky. As a little girl she had dreamed of marrying a handsome, gallant knight out of love, just like the maidens did in all of her favourite songs, and while she was no maiden and he was no _knight_, marrying him would be better still than any song sung. Her excitement made her distracted as she readied herself, to the point where she stood before her looking-glass only half aware of how she had gotten there.

It was only a year and a half since her last wedding, but there was something different in her reflection, she noticed as she regarded herself. _I am a woman now,_ it occurred to her, _and I am ready for this. More than ready._ And she broke into a smile.

Her hair was styled with all the elegance the North would tolerate, her delicate iron diadem perched carefully on her brow. The gown she had sown for herself was white, laced with careful gray scrollwork all across the bodice and on the cuffs of her dagged sleeves. On her shoulders was her too-thin bridal cloak from the vale, but the smoke-quartz wolfs-head clasp had been traded for a proper silver direwolf she had recovered from the family crypts. She picked at it, ascertaining it was surely fastened.

She remembered thinking of Sandor's cloak before her last wedding, and her heart skipped a beat as she reminded herself it was _his_ cloak that awaited her this time. _Like it always should have been,_ she thought with a happy sigh. Even before he had proposed to her, this wedding had felt more _right_ to Sansa than both of her others had; she had been given time to anticipate it, to prepare for it, to enjoy her betrothal and her betrothed. She sent her maids for her great-uncle to say she was ready, but it was the Greatjon who appeared at her door.

"He asked me if I might want the honour of giving you away, Your Grace," he said, his blue eyes twinkling. "I am no kin to you, I know that, but I knew your father well—the Blackfish wondered if he might not have preferred me in Lord Eddard's stead."

Sansa grinned and took his arm gladly, and the Greatjon bent to place a kiss on top of her head, just as her father might have done. _Would you give your blessing now, father? If you knew who I had chosen to marry?_

"_I will make you a match with someone who's worthy of you, someone who's brave and strong and gentle,_" he had said, trying to usher her from King's Landing all those years ago. Sandor was all three, she thought, and always had been, even when he had frightened her so when they were first becoming acquainted. She hoped her father would have blessed this union; somewhere inside her, she knew he would have done.

As she swept her skirts through the snows on her way to the Godswood she had to remind herself not to run—last time she had walked on shaky legs to the sept, gritting her teeth and remembering her duty, her _duty_, trying to ease the ache of settling into another union she wanted naught to do with. _Family, __**duty**__, honour_, she had chanted to herself that day, her mother's words, but now she settled on _family_. It was a family she would secure in marrying him, a real family, built not on vows spoken in septs and traded names and cloaks but on _love_, as all real and stable families are. "Calm yourself, child—you're like to drag this old man through the snow at the pace you want to go," the Greatjon had said, chuckling, drawing her to pause outside the gates to the Godswood, taking her chin in his hands. "If you are this excited, then you know this must be right," he said, as if to reassure her.

She needed no reassurance, though; especially not as she caught Sandor's eye from where he stood before her heart tree, splendid in his yellow, hands clasped before him. The world fell away from her as she closed the distance between them, and she thought she saw an extra glistening in his eyes as he took her hands ever so softly, the Greatjon stepping back from them before they broke their eye contact to kneel before the tree, speaking their hearts to their Gods. Greatjon Umber appeared behind her again after she stood, unfastening Harry's cloak and handing the clasp to Sandor as his gray eyes sunk into her own. Her heart skipped a beat and she swallowed in anticipation as Sandor plucked the clasp from Lord Umber and placed it between his lips, suddenly serious, focused on his task. The smooth motion with which he removed his own cloak, draping it over her shoulders and pulling it tightly about her, reminded Sansa of all the other times he had given her his cloak, and just how _right_ it was that he was doing it again, here, now. He stole a kiss to her cheek before he withdrew, turned her to face him, and kissed her fully, tenderly, and though she knew well his kisses by then, there was still something new and infinitely perfect about this kiss, the one that bound her to him completely, in front of Gods and men, as she had always been bound in her heart.

"_Lady _Clegane," he rasped in her ear, tugging her waist closer to him and kissing her cheek once more before he led her from the Godswood to their wedding feast. Never, she thought, had he ever sounded so happy.

Though she was well and truly their Queen now, the horde of drunken Northern Lords saw no discernible impropriety in stripping Sansa just as naked as the Lords of the Vale had on her second wedding night. They might have even had her out of her gowns _faster_, she realized, upon being shoved into her empty bedchamber, tallow candles laid out in rippling yellow rows on many of the surfaces in the room, a low fire burning in the hearth. She heard the squealing of women and could not help the giggles that bubbled up from her core, a radiant expression of the anticipation she felt deeper within her. It had only been a year she had been waiting to have him again, and yet at times the wait had seemed physically agonizing.

The chamber door creaked open and the din of shrieking women got infinitely louder, and Sansa was met with the (all too pleasant) image of her husband, stark-naked and blushing, desperately trying to cover himself and escape the women. His eyes were wide with shock and embarrassment, and he might have even yelped as Alysanne Mormont poked her head in on the closing door long enough to give him a stern whack on the arse. She was laughing near-hysterically when the door finally closed, her husband sighing with a light irritation, uncovering himself and shaking his head, giving her a narrow glare as he crossed the room to take her hands in his.

"You Northern women will kill me one of these days, I swear it," and picked her hands up, kissing each one tenderly before folding them around his neck, looping his wrists around her waist with a smouldering intimacy in his eyes. A whole minute they might have spent just looking at one another, and Sansa found herself mentally chanting _real, real, this is finally real_ the whole time, a prayer that she might one day believe it. It was her husband who broke the silence, shaking his hair out of his face and bowing a little as he spoke. "My Queen."

She giggled. "My _King_," she said pointedly, going up on her tiptoes to kiss his collarbone, her bare skin feverish where it brushed against his.

He chuckled lowly, a gentle rumble in his chest as he leaned down to take her mouth, whispering his response against her lips. "I suppose I should get used to that, shouldn't I?"

"Mmmh," was all she could manage as his lips were on hers, his kiss like an invitation, a proposal that he claim her for himself. She assented beneath it, and let him draw her up off the floor with one hand so he could hold her closer, burying the other in her hair. The kiss was everything a kiss should be—warm, tender, wanting for nothing, the kiss itself like an intimate conversation between them in a language only they could understand. Briefly, briefly, she thought again of her imagined kiss, the one she liked to have thought they shared just before they parted for the first time, and just how inadequate her imagination had been. Her fantasy had not been able to guess the softness of his lips, scarred and unscarred halves both, or the taste that was uniquely him, not marred by blood or sweat or soot or tears. More briefly still she thought of her first intimate kiss with Harry, and, despite his skill at it all, how little his kiss had stirred her. But then Sandor pulled her up higher, drawing her legs around his waist and anchoring her against him, and she forgot about everything except him, his hands, his lips, his love.

"Come," she whispered urgently as he broke from her lips to nibble at her jaw, "let me make your sons brothers to a King."

"To be frank, Little Bird, I'm content just to share them with you," and he returned to her lips, holding her fast as he paced over and laid her down in the bed he made her, the bed they would share now, and took what was rightfully his.

It was hours yet before they could be still, always with something yet to kiss, to stroke, the pulsing of their gaze enough to keep them dancing even when exhaustion threatened to pull them down into sleep. Myranda had no idea what she was talking about, Sansa decided, because even the wildest of her stories were tiny candles against the blazing sun of Sandor's passion. She circled her fingertips lazily on his chest as he breathed heavily beside her, beads of his sweat like diamonds embedded in his skin, just as precious and fine, as far as Sansa was concerned. She curled to kiss the place her fingers circled and brought forth a groan from him that quickly turned into a laugh, his fingers all twisted into her hair as he cradled her head against him.

"Gods, Sansa, you are supposed to _enjoy _the bedding," he said, facetiousness as much a part of his voice as his rasp. He dragged her up to his lips and claimed them again as she giggled against him.

"And _what_ makes you think that I did not?" she asked, mock-indignant, eliciting another laugh from him that sent shivers down her spine. She climbed up his body to kiss him more truly, but their kisses took on a sweeter, lighter cadence as they melted into one another, their whole affect softening. She laid her head on his chest when he broke the kiss, encircling her in his arms, her eyelids too heavy to keep open anymore.

"Little Bird is _mine_ now," he whispered, rasping. "I don't know if I will ever believe it."

"That will come with time," she sighed, splaying her fingers on his chest again, over his heart, "but let us sleep now, my love. Our story is just beginning."


	24. Epilogue

EPILOGUE—17 years later

**SANDOR**

With every new northern Spring he saw, Sandor liked them all the better.

He woke in his bedchamber, the grandest in the castle, with the Queen Regent, his Little Bird, still asleep in his arms. The sung was long risen, he could tell from the brightness of the yellow light—he woke his Little Bird with a long, deep kiss, and called for their baths.

"I think I am looking forward to being a simple Lady again," Sansa chirped happily, scenting her wrists and her neck.

"I know I am, Little Bird. But you will always be the Queen of my heart," he replied as he buckled his armour slowly, trying to delay the inevitability of putting a comb through his hair. It was a big day for his stepson and his wife would have him looking nothing short of immaculate. Once he might have growled at the thought, but Sandor had seen enough formal occasions as King Consort in the North to only dread it slightly.

She smiled at him, the familiarity of her beauty and expression dulling none of the radiance of it. As she aged, she seemed only to get more beautiful—her auburn hair, once a bright copper, had darkened, only making the contrast between it, her white skin and her blue eyes all the more striking. Even still, seven-and-ten years after wrapping his cloak about her shoulders in her Godswood, her beauty would suddenly occur to him and render him speechless, often to his inconvenience.

"Do you think Elinor has arrived yet?" she asked, picking up his comb and beckoning him to sit before her, bypassing any attempt to get him to groom himself. Sandor chortled.

"If Elinor had arrived, we would know." She was his daughter to the bone, Elinor. Sansa had always insisted she reminded her of her sister Arya, half-wild as she was, but his daughter had all the ferocity and loyalty that his house was famous for. Though she had her mother's beautiful white skin and sharp, high cheekbones, and something of a long face as he understood was characteristic of the Stark line, her thick, black hair and winter-gray eyes were his. She took after her father in build, long of leg, broad of shoulder and narrow of waist, and was bustier than her mother had ever been, even at five-and-ten as she was. Just as Sandor had ever refused to be a Knight, so his daughter had refused to be a lady—never had his wife been so cross with him as the day she heard her eight-year-old darling girl snarl "piss on that" at her younger brother Brandon, only five at the time—but the young heir of house Umber had not seemed to mind. They had been married in the Godswood in Winterfell during a light winter snow, the colour of her cloak, emblazoned with the three black dogs of his house, whiter than the ground around them.

It had been his son Artos' idea to change their sigil. As honest as he had ever been with his Little Bird, so too was he honest with their children. One day, as he explained (rather calmly, he was proud to admit) some of the..._differences_ he had with their late uncle Gregor, his eldest son, bearing the most striking resemblance to his wife, had said "Why do we not have our own sigil, then, father? If you want to separate yourself from Uncle Gregor?"

"What would you have our sigil be, son?" Sandor had asked him. The boy shook his waving copper hair out of his face, screwed up in thought. Though his eldest son's eyes were the same colour as his own, as well as the shape of the boy's face and body, his white skin and delicate features were all a tribute to his mother's beauty. The boy was very comely, Sandor knew, though was entirely confused as to how someone so handsome could be his trueborn son. Artos had posessed a cherubic beauty at the age he had declared their sigil be three dogs on a _white_ field, because he had never seen an autumn any other colour than that of fresh-fallen snow, but as he grew his beauty matured to a sculpted, classical handsomeness to rival that of the Knight of the Flowers. He was an excellent swordsman, too—Sandor had seen to that personally—light on his feet but _strong_, his favourite weapon the two-handed greatsword his mother had seen forged for his twelfth nameday, his boy already tall and strong enough to wield it. Sandor was proudest, though, of his son's good heart—never in his sixteen years had he heard him so much as utter a single word to hurt another person, his honour as natural and dear to him as breath. If a truer Knight had ever been born, Sandor had not the pleasure of his acquaintance, yet like his father Artos refused to speak the vows of Knighthood—not out of disdain, as Sandor had, but because, as he put it, "I need no vows to keep my chivalry, honour or truth."

A knock came from the door and a tall, lanky child with a shock of long black hair swept himself into the room. Smaller than his brother had been at twelve, Sandor's youngest son Brandon was the quietest and cleverest of the bunch. He was quicker than his brother with a sword yet preferred the bow, his aim as good as Sandor had ever seen. Brandon was the only of his children to take after Sansa in build and Sandor in the face, though he had her shocking blue eyes so truly that sometimes Sandor found himself confused when he looked into them. And though he had his same thin lips and sharp nose as his father there was a beauty in the boy that was inexplicable to Sandor—his radiant innocence, perhaps, or curiosity, the way his fastidious attention to the world around him animated his features. Or maybe it was just that he too was born of Sansa, and the Little Bird could create nothing that was not completely and utterly breathtaking in its beauty, even if it looked, as Brandon did, like him.

"Brandon Stark Clegane. _Why _does your hair look as though you slept in the stables last night?!"

He glanced at his father and smirked, ever so gently, before he spoke, ignoring his mother.

"Edwyn has been sick with nerves," he announced, his voice soft, gentle and dulcet—it had only broken that year. "He would see father."

"Me?" Sandor asked incredulously. Brandon only nodded, looking him right in the eyes. _Gods, but he does have her eyes,_ he thought.

"I am his mother, I should go to him," Sansa insisted, setting down the comb on her vanity _thank the Gods _but their son stopped her, shifting back onto his heels.

"He told me specifically to bring father, my Lady."

Sandor shrugged to his wife and stood, clapping a hand onto his son's bony shoulder, his black leather jerkin making him look smaller than he was. "You had better stay here and look after your mother, then, boy. Let her at that..._mane_ of yours," he taunted, tossing a lock of the boy's hair over his shoulder, it reaching halfway down his back. Neither of his sons were particularly taken with keeping their hair sheared above their shoulders—even Edwyn wore his reddish-blonde hair longer as of late—but Brandon's refusal to cut his hair was beginning to get ridiculous, even by Sandor's fashion standards.

The King Consort in the North strode out of his chambers hastily, making for those of his stepson. In Harry's absence, Sandor had happily played father to the Little Bird's hatchling, the little King calling him "papa" even years after he came to understand his natural parentage. The whole winter of his birth Edwyn had spent against Sandor's breast to keep warm, and over that winter as he groped with his little hands to pull at his protector's long hair, Sandor had become extremely taken with the child. Even before he could speak the boy had charm, something in his light blue eyes universally endearing, and that charm had grown into a legendary charisma that left every maiden from the Wall to the Dornish Marches pining for young King Edwyn. Beyond charm, he had a cool head and a warm heart, measured judgement and an equal hand in justice and mercy—_he is Sansa in masculine form_, Sandor had once concluded when he had yet been a boy-King of four years, watching him stand by his mother to address their people, their postures identically erect. Lord Robert Arryn had died not long after Edwyn's third nameday, and yet he had been regal even then, holding Sansa's hand but standing upright of his own accord, his expression uniquely serene as she placed the little iron circlet on his brow. Edwyn had seen four-and-ten namedays since his first coronation, ruling the Vale expertly with the grace he was born with, and yet here he was, sick with nerves on the morning of his second.

Artos was in audience with his half-brother in the King's chambers, wearing the same splendid gray and white armour his father wore, and the woollen gray cloak of the Kingsguard-in-the-Vale. He stood to attention when his father entered the room—_ Gods, he will be taller than me before the year is out,_ Sandor could not help but think. Artos had always been tall, but lately he had grown _broad, _filling out and bulking up seemingly without any effort, his figure forming to something out of a maiden's most lascivious dream. Though he kept his copper hair long, unlike Brandon it always seemed to be artfully mussed and clean. Artos nodded to his father and cleared his throat, wrenching the King from his intent pacing in the opposite corner of the room.

"Sandor," he breathed, relieved.

"Your Grace," Sandor bowed. His stepson crossed the room and seemed to shrink beneath him, the closer he was viewed. It was another remarkable aspect of Edwyn's character—from across the room or below the dais Edwyn could appear a God, yet when one drew up next to him (especially if either of his brothers stood nearby) one realized just how petite the King actually was. Not scrawny or weak, but petite. "What would you have of me that is of such import we must keep it from your mother?"

"I would have your honesty, My Lord." Sandor raised an eyebrow at his stepson, who exchanged a glance with his brother before they continued. "I must have your opinion on the matter—I know how mother would answer, regardless of truth. This one would answer no different," he nudged his younger brother playfully with his elbow, and towering over the King, Artos tried to suppress a smile. Edwyn's light blue eyes met Artos' grey ones for a moment before they looked to address their mutual father figure.

"And what question would that be, Your Grace?" Sandor rasped, trying not to sound amused.

Edwyn drew breath slowly, all playfulness disappearing from within him. "I want to know that I am strong enough to hold the North. Not in force, but in character. I...I cannot help but feel _unworthy _of it. Look at me—do I look like a Northman, Papa? Do I look like the sort of man the Greatjon could bend his knee to?"

Sandor looked at his son. Artos' armour squealed as he shrugged.

"He refuses to listen to me, father."

"I mean—"Edwyn sighed. "I just...I know I have been raised in the North. I was born during the worst Winter in living memory, and I bear the Stark name. But, I just—Papa, I just feel like—maybe if I were more..." Sandor brought up a finger to the boy's lips and took his shoulder gently, crouching down to get on his level, like he had always done when the boy began to fret.

"Edwyn Stark. Are you the first King in the North to bear that name?"

"Well, no, but—"

"When you pray to the Gods, do you go to the Godswood or to the Sept?"

"To the Godswood, but I—"

"And if you sentence a man to death, do you hand your brother the sword to swing?"

"No, I do not, but Papa, I—"

"Edwyn, listen to me. You are the last of a line that has ruled the North for more than eight thousand years," he swept a lock of hair away from the boy's face. Eight-and-ten, a man grown, but he would always be a little boy to Sandor, deep in his heart. "Your people love you. I was in the North on the day of your birth—you gave them _hope_ child, on the blackest day of Winter, you brought them light. Any man or woman older than you will remember the feeling in the country on the day you were born. It was bitter, bitter cold, yet everyone's hearts were warmed. You brought them the _Spring,_ Edwyn. To a Northman, there is no greater gift than Spring."

"But am I _strong_ enough, Sandor? I...I just feel...times like these, I wish I were _your _son..."

"Hush. Never say that," Sandor barked softly, taking the boy's chin. "Your father was a good man, a better man than me. He died fighting for your mother's respect, and mine. He had all the honour one could ask for in a father to a King. He was a good man, Edwyn, and he was well-liked by Northmen and Valemen alike. Your likeness to him only reminds us of his sacrifice, and it only adds to your worthiness of this crown."

Edwyn gave Sandor a small smile. "If you're sure, Papa."

"I'm sure, son," he said, shaking his hand firmly.

"...I _told_ you, brother," Artos murmured, his deep voice rumbling quietly from where he stood, smirking, a few yards off.

"Oh, go bugger yourself with a hot poker!" Edwyn growled at his brother, laughing.

"Your Grace!" Sandor exclaimed, feigning shock at his language.

"Quit stealing my lines, brother," came a feminine snarl from the door. A moment later, Edwyn was staggering back, a tall woman in a dark red gown with long, shiny black hair having leapt into his arms.

"You always _did _know how to make an entrance, little sister," Artos said smiling, bending to scoop Elinor into his arms once she had let her half-brother go, swinging her around in a high circle. Skittering footsteps rang in the hallway behind them, and Brandon slipped into the room, his hair, now combed, nearly as long and beautiful as his sister's.

"I heard profanity," Brandon cracked, hurrying to open his arms to his older sister's enthusiastic embrace.

"Seven _hells_ Brandon, who told you that you were allowed to grow?!" She swore. Sandor laughed.

"Had you been born a boy I would have beat you bloody for that mouth of yours," he rasped when his daughter finally turned to him, her coy smile as much a part of her face as any of her features. "How does our Lord Umber find it?"

"I should think he rather _likes_ my mouth, father."

Sandor shuddered, chuckling darkly. "I have half a mind to beat you bloody anyway. Don't try me." And he caught her as she launched herself upon him, throwing her arms up around his neck, clinging to him fiercely. She kissed his burned cheek—she had always favoured his burned cheek—and whispered to him.

"I miss you, Papa."

"Miss you too, little one. Glad you came home."

After a long moment, he dropped her to the floor, his heart sinking just a little. "Where is mother?" She demanded.

"In her chambers. She would want to comb _your_ hair too, I suspect," Brandon said cynically.

"Oh _yes,_ what is this?" Elinor teased, toying with the little plaits Sansa had put trailing back from her son's temples. "You look like a bloody tourney horse all ready for the joust!"

"Shut up!" Brandon whispered, shoving her. His sister cackled with glee.

"Pardon my tardiness, I was accosted by stewards," Sansa offered, all grace as she appeared in the doorway. "Oh, Elinor, my sweet!" His daughter had always been gentler with her mother, wrapping her arms around her delicately, kissing each cheek affectionately.

"Hello Mother. It is so good to be home."

"It seems wrong to call it home without you here, dear sister," Edwyn said. "Now come. Hug me properly."

"As Your Grace commands," she said, mock-bashfully, going through another round of embracing her brothers. Sandor pulled his wife against him, holding her hand over her shoulder. He looked around at his children, suddenly overcome with joy.

There were days he felt as though he had tricked fate, using some cunning he knew not he had to procure for himself a life he did not deserve. He had been a boy born in fire, lived by his sword, enjoyed his killing, and thirsted for his brother's blood. A grievous sinner he had been, and yet somehow he had tricked the Gods into sending him to heaven when he died of his leg wound outside Saltpans. And what a splendid heaven for him they had wrought—they gave him the woman of his wildest dreams to wife and let her give him three healthy (_beautiful!_) children. Though he had been born the son of a petty lord and kennel master, he would die a King Consort to Sansa Stark, first of her name, the Redeemer, Queen in the North. He had tricked her into loving him and bearing him children, and in turn tricked each one of them into thinking he was a good and loving father. He was not good enough to deserve it—the happiness, the love—but he took their love nonetheless.

Other days, he felt justified in his fate. He had suffered long and deeply enough that he figured he had earned the great happiness he was granted. After years of scornful, disgusted whores, the gods owed him the love of a beauty like Sansa. After years mourning the death of a father, mother and sister at the hands of a monstrous brother, the gods owed him the close-knit, affectionate family he had. After years of violence and ever-simmering hatred, the gods owed him the peace of Winterfell.

But the best were the days when he realized—usually sharply, at some ordinary moment of no evident import—that this was his reality. He had neither tricked the gods nor taken his due from them; this was simply how his life had turned out. He had the love of a sublime beauty and idyllic family because he built it, ground up, by being himself and doing as he would. These days were truly great—sobering in the best way possible—he could hardly remember what it had felt like to be the Hound, his peace steeped deep within him. _She is my peace_, he had told the Elder brother; never had he spoken truer words. She twisted around in his arms and stretched up on her tiptoes to kiss him—even still, he had to pull her up into the air to reach him. _Gods only know what I ever did to capture the love of Sansa Stark..._

_Sansa __**Clegane**_, he thought to himself, her lips soft and familiar beneath his. _Seven-and-ten years she has been yours, dog; you've got to remember her __**name**_...


End file.
